Things Are As They Are

Yesterday, traveling back from Oklahoma, I had a great opportunity to use my practice of positive acceptance.   My flight home to Washington D.C. was connecting in Dallas.  About the time we were scheduled to board the plane, an announcement was made that, due to thunderstorms, there was a "ground hold" in Dallas - no planes were landing or taking off.  

My scheduled connection in Dallas was only 45 minutes, so even a modest delay could mean I'd miss my flight.  Of course, the ground hold affected all the flights.  

I spent the next couple of hours watching people in the concourse, watching billowy gray clouds move across the sky, and watching a parade of planes, diverted from Dallas, land and taxi up near the airport to wait out the storm raging 200 miles south.  

I didn't know when our plane would go to Dallas, though it was nearly certain that it would.  The flight status information on the connecting flight indicated that it was scheduled to leave Dallas before we could possibly get there.  

Not so long ago, I would have let myself become anxious and irritated - if not at the weather delay, then at the lack of reliable information in the promised regular updates that came only irregularly.  Instead, what came to mind was the ending phrase from the mantra that I work with:  "Things are as things are; I am positive in all things."  Indeed.

When they read the connecting flight gates as we approached Dallas, Washington Reagan was on the list, at a gate at the far end of the C concourse from our arrival gate.  I walked quickly down the concourse, equally prepared for the plane to be waiting or for the flight to have left without me.   I arrived just a couple of minutes before they boarded my group, and made it home, a few hours late, but free of stress.

No situation can create stress for us, we get to do that for ourselves.   Things are just things.  We create stress (or not) through our response to them.