I’m supposed to be on a plane tonight. But I’m flying Alaska, and they had a plane lose a big piece of the fuselage last week. As they were flying. They made an emergency landing in Portland. No one was physically injured. Groundings and inspections and a cascading array of flight cancellations ensued. Just after checking into my flight last night, I got the notification that my flight was cancelled. I’m on the same flight, scheduled two days later.

I’m staying with my best friend and her wife, I have my computer, I can work from here. This isn’t a hardship. But it’s reminded me how unsettling change can be, especially change (travel plans) combined with fear (nervous flyer). I had time to consider this at 3am, wide awake in my very comfortable bed.

Since this small shift is not in any way actually causing me practical difficulty, and, in fact, gives me three more days with beloved friends, clearly the actual thing that’s happening isn’t the thing that’s waking me up at night.

I’ve been thinking about what lies beneath. Often, I’ll identify something that I think is the problem and try to sort it out, bombard it with solutions. And then it turns out the thing I think is the problem isn’t actually the problem after all. It’s really about the fear, grief or the resentment fueling my need for action, for impact.

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