song: passage by lowercase noises

read time: 4 mintues

seat assignments on airplanes are very important. if you’ve ever taken a long flight, [anything over 59 minutes will qualify], you will agree. regardless if you’re an aisle person or a window person, i think everyone can agree — middle is the worst. no exaggeration there. you have no actual space. the person on your right and left, both think that the arm rests belong to them. when you fall asleep, the whole time you can’t rest peacefully because you are concerned if you are going to unconsciously stay in your designated personal space or if you are going to accidentally do the most traumatic thing: fall asleep and rest your head on your neighbor’s shoulder. no good can come from the middle seat.

the window seat, however, is quite different. you have plenty of legroom, defined personal space, the curvature of the plane to rest your head on, and dibs on the armrest. not to mention, you can always control the natural light — window open, window close. it’s no one’s choice but yours. THAT, i love.

so, yes, i am undoubtedly a window person.

it’s a rare occasion that i don’t fall asleep right away on planes. i am that person who will fall asleep before the plane ever takes off. i think it was God’s gift to me. but the other day, on my way back from boston, i couldn’t fall asleep for the life of me. i was edgy, with ideas dancing around in my head — ideas of things i wanted to do, ideas of things i wanted to say, ideas of things i wanted to write.

as i sat, looking out the window and thinking, i saw another plane in the distance. i watched the plane for as long as i could until it left my line of vision. the entire time, it felt as if our plane was barely moving through the clouds and the plane i was watching off in the distance was moving at lightning speeds to it’s destination.

my mind stopped thinking about all the ideas that were floating around, and for a minute, there was utter stillness.

how often do we do this? how often do we look at the lives around us, the lives of people off in the distance, and get the notion that they are moving more quickly to their destination and that we are barely moving.

i’ll speak for myself — i am guilty of this.

there have been so many times where i have felt as if everyone around me was moving quickly through life — checking off the things they wanted to do, accomplish, see, and experience. they were getting married, finding comfortable corporate jobs, moving out of state, buying their first homes, and having babies.

me, on the other hand, well, i was moving — i know this because days kept on passing by, but at times, it felt as if i was moving at astronomically slow paces in life.

it’s easy to feel this way when we spend too much time looking out the window of our own lives and looking at the lives of other people.

the truth is — we’re all moving at just the right pace.

while it may have felt like my plane was moving slower — it wasn’t. it was moving just as fast, but merely in a completely opposite direction. we were headed west, and the other plane was moving east. we were flying higher, the other plane was flying lower. the variables, were all different, but we were all moving at the pace and in the direction we needed to go.

in the same way, while so many times it may have felt like my life was moving slower than everybody else’s around me— it wasn’t. the whole time, i have merely been going in a different direction. i have a different destination. my current destination is to build an empire, so to speak, while others’ it is to start a family, establish roots, or climb the corporate ladder.

each of us have different dreams, goals, and aspirations in life. so how can we expect each of our life timelines to unfold in the same way and at the same pace? we can’t. it would defy what is possible.

if we are actually going to get to our destination in one piece and with our sanity intact — we need to stop kicking and screaming, wondering why our lives aren’t moving as fast as the person next to us.

quit watching what everyone else is doing and calculating how fast they may be going in comparison to yourself— instead soak in the dazzling sunsets, the quick seconds where the sun glistens through the clouds, and the little moments that make you excited to be on your journey.

start focusing on you. start focusing on your destination — what you want it to look like when you get there? what do you want to experience along the way? what memories do you want to soak in during the journey?

friend, you are moving. you are going places. while right now, you may be in a season, where you feel like everyone is getting to their destination sooner — just remember this, they may not be headed in the same direction, their variables may be different, they may not be traveling as far as you are.

you are enroute. your life is moving at just the right pace. any faster, and you might speed past and miss what life has planned for you. any slower, and you might miss your window of opportunity. you’ll get to where you need to be, without delay. you are going at just the right pace.