I Could’ve Made A Big Stink
But to what end?
We hadn’t been in the air for more than an hour when my son started throwing up into the airsick bag. Wiping his chin and signaling to my husband to get me the change of clothes, I took a quick peek at the flight timer. 13.5 hours to go.
Sometimes acceptance is easy. Other times it’s really hard.
Not everyone’s had the experience of a long-haul flight with a sick child. But we’ve all endured difficult moments that we couldn’t change or “fix.”
In those moments, finding acceptance feels impossible. But it also feels like the best possible option.
Don’t misunderstand me. I was livid with the staff aboard that flight who’d served us the wrong meals and who’d then proceeded to tell us we couldn’t use the only empty bathroom, as it was designated, “for staff only.”
It didn’t matter! My son had eaten the food and there was nothing I could do to avoid the inevitable. We were in a metal tube, 3,000 feet in the sky, without access to medical services or fresh air.
The only option I had was to make my son as comfortable as possible (and book the return flights on a different airline after we landed).
Here’s the thing. Challenges are part of life.
Discomfort is even inevitable to a certain degree. It’s when we refuse to accept this that we make things worse than they need to be.
I could have made a big stink about the food on the plane. In some ways, it would have been justified. But it wouldn’t have improved the situation. There are times when it’s better to simply accept that something’s going to be uncomfortable.
Touching down at our destination, we collected all our soiled clothes in plastic bags salvaged from discarded headphone sets. We smelled of sun-baked vomit and looked something akin to a rat dragged through a mud puddle. At that moment, all we thought about was the fresh air and bathrooms on solid ground waiting for us.
Sometimes acceptance is really hard. Other times it’s easy.
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