L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Small Miracles in the Air

May 18, 2007 on 5:18 pm | In General Musing |

From Atlanta:

The airline gods smiled on us today. Our plane from Seattle to Denver sat for about an hour on the tarmac due to some alleged problem with the navigation computer (hey captain, head east and a little south), so we landed in Denver at 11 am to catch a 10:30 connection to Atlanta. But when we got off the plane we discovered that the Denver to Atlanta plane miraculously had been having mechanical problems as well so they were still boarding. Not only that, the departure gate was right next door to our arrival gate. Has this ever happened anywhere? I thought it was a rule of physics that the distance between gates was inversely proportional to the time between connections. We only had to sit on the tarmac another hour before lumbering unsteadily into the sky. Today I am reservedly grateful for poorly maintained aircraft.

On the flight, I started reading a fascinating new book: Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. It’s about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future and our capacity (or lack thereof) to predict how much we will like it when we get there. So far, it falls right in line with the theme of my new show, “My Perfect Life… and Other Delusions.” A perfect life is not something you can get, something outside yourself that you can work toward. It is a state of mind - a choice. The things that happen to you have less power over your ultimate happiness than you think.

We treat our future selves as though they were our children - Spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy… (only) for them to cast a disparaging glance backward and wonder what the hell we were thinking.

Tomorrow: Bat Mitvah Madness descends, but today all is quiet on the southern front.

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