Wayward

To know how we can get to where we are going, we must first know where we are.

Have you ever landed in a place in life you’d never intended? An unsettling feeling for sure! Particularly if the circumstances which brought you there were not entirely under your control.

Years ago, after an 18-hour trek up Interstate 5 to Seattle and another frantic day of apartment hunting to settle my best friend into his new life up north, I boarded my plane for home, exhausted both physically and emotionally. Yet, I knew I had a packed schedule of interviews to conduct the next day from my office in Los Angeles, and wisely had arranged for my parents to pick me up from Ontario Airport.

They stood eager to welcome me back…only to witness everyone deboard the plane, including the flight personnel and pilot…absent me! They knew I had a brief layover in San Francisco enroute home and frantically called the SouthWest Airlines counter at SFO in the hope of tracking me down, knowing I had officially checked onto my flight, perhaps falling asleep before boarding the second leg of my trip.

When I awoke from my slumber, I discovered that I was NOT in San Francisco as they’d imagined, but in Seattle. Yes, I’d flown from Seattle to San Francisco and back to Seattle. Checking into the second leg of my trip at SFO, I’d been wrongly directed to an incorrect gate for a near-empty flight with a bad sound system and a second boarding flight attendant who checked my ticket, sending me to my seat which was never contested by another passenger. When I couldn’t decipher a word regarding the flight and safety measures, I quickly fell asleep.

I finally stirred as we approached our landing, puzzled by the unfamiliar landscape below. Deboarding the plane into SeaTac Airport, I remember the look on that poor woman’s face as I entered the unknown airport a bit delirious and bewildered, asking, “Forgive me, where am I?”

Relative to your own desired destination, where are you?