Brad Feld

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Pretending You Are Luggage

Nov 03, 2009
Category Places

At dinner tonight we started telling miserable airplane travel stories.  Everyone has a least one (or 7,321) so it’s fun to hear some of the really abysmal ones, especially the night before I head to the airport to catch an early morning flight.

We were also talking about various philosophies of life and how to deal with difficult stuff.  After a while the conversation circled back to air travel.  And then I heard the best line of the night.

When I travel I pretend I’m luggage.  From the moment I set foot in the airport, my expectation is that I’ll be treated no better than my luggage gets treated.  As a result, my expectations are so low that any little bit of happiness and politeness brings me great pleasure.”

I laughed out loud.  It was said with a sardonic grin, so the backdrop was framed appropriately.  There was a quiet pause after my laughter.  And then I pondered it – and thought how incredibly right this approach was.

Rather than bitch endlessly about the misery of our air travel experiences, let’s all spend November pretending we are luggage.  The only goal of the plane is to get us from point A to point B.  I guess there are circumstances where this won’t happen, but in most cases we’ll eventually get there.  Time doesn’t really matter to a piece of luggage, nor does comfort.  Politeness?  I’ve shoved many a piece of luggage into a space that it didn’t fit without even saying “excuse me.”  Oh – and I’ve put my smelly feet on my luggage many, many times.

In addition to pretending I’m luggage, I’m also going to make sure I use my super power on every plane flight this month. Luggage is very good at sleeping on planes, as am I.  Luggage sleepers unite.

See you at the airport.