Everything's Fine

Tonight I was on a plane taking off from Portland destined for Phoenix. It’s a work trip, and a flight I take frequently. As the flight took off, I read my book until my eyes grew heavy, and I dozed off. Thirty minutes later, I woke up, really for no specific reason, but I noticed that there were more people chatting amongst each other.

Just overly friendly passengers. Everything’s fine.

It was about 6:00pm and the sun was on it’s way to setting and shining through the window to my right. Almost annoyingly so. But I was in the middle seat, and as everyone knows, if you find yourself in the middle seat on a plane, you have no rights. So there was nothing I could do about it.

My first hint that something wasn’t right was as I was looking between the seats in front of me, I saw Vin Diesel and Paul Walker steal a safe with some cars. Then Jason Mamoa started chasing them in his own car. I hadn’t seen this latest Fast and Furious movie yet. But I was enjoying eaves-watching on his phone, using Alaska Airlines Wifi movie service, until all of a sudden it stopped working. I watched the person in front of me tap pause and play and rewind and fast-forward. Nothing worked. That’s strange. Maybe they turned the Wi-Fi off for some reason. After a few minutes, he turned his phone off, frustrated. Did they escape with the safe? Also what about all the collateral damage to roads and bystanders and passing cars? I guess I’ll find out later.

Oh well, I’m sure everything’s fine.

About 10 minutes later, the plane tipped to the right and started to turn. The glare of the sun moved from my right and towards the front of the plane and out of sight. Hm. Well that’s odd.

I’m sure everything’s fine.

Well now that the sun wasn’t an annoyance, I tried going back to sleep, but couldn’t. Ok, I guess I’ll read a little bit more of my book. About a minute later, the captain hopped on the intercom. I already knew what he was going to say, because the sun was clearly on my left now. We were heading back to Portland.

The captain also informed us that apparently there had been some strange fumes throughout the plane, and some people were not feeling well as a result. So out of an abundance of caution, they decided to turn the plane around.

Strange fumes. Hm. Ok. Everything’s fine.

The woman on my left is fidgeting and nervous, I can sense her frustration. The young man on my right, also sensing something wrong, finally tore his eyes away from the Taylor Swift concert he had been watching (and grooving to) on his phone. He removed his headphones, and asked what was happening. I opened my mouth to answer, but the nervous woman on my left jumped in and explained the situation before I could (because again, I had no rights).

I look around and can tell that people are nervous. What could be wrong with the plane to cause fumes strong enough to turn the plane around?

No idea. But the captain has a calm and soothing voice. I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.

Be strong like Taylor Swift. Shake it off. Everything’s fine.

There’s nervous tension for the next 20 minutes or so as the captain informs us that we will land soon and the flight crew needs to prep the cabin. As they do this, for some reason I didn’t understand, they don’t turn on the cabin lights, and the captain asks us all to turn on our reading lights so the flight crew can see and correct our improperly stowed items, lowered tray tables, and barely inclined seats. My light was already on as I had returned to reading my book, and therefore wasn’t paying attention to why we were instructed to do this. Does the plane not have enough power to turn on the lights? Yet somehow this powerful hunk of metal we sit in propels through the air at tremendous speeds just fine?

Oh boy. Ok well, maybe this is normal in this kind of situation? I’m sure everything’s fine.

We are a few minutes away from landing, and the captain lets us know, in his most captainy voice, that some fire trucks and emergency services will escort us to the gate once we land. We land and sure enough, we’re surrounded by flashing lights and guided in. Die hard 2 flashes through my mind.

Yippee Ki-Yay. Everything’s fine.

We pull in and the captain preps us for some fireman who board and walk up and down the isle. Ok, that wasn’t so bad. I walk off the plane and there are no less than 30 fireman at the gate waiting for us to de-plane. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that many fireman all together before. What in the world was going on?

I have no earthly idea. But in the end, everything was, in fact, fine.

And that’s the last concerning thought I have. I head over to a new gate and prep myself to hop on a new plane. Of course, there’s some time to kill now, so I decide to make the most of it and begin to write about my the experience. Even though nothing of consequence happened and everything and everyone is ok, I wanted to capture some of my thoughts in the moment, or shortly thereafter.

What’s interesting, and a somewhat serendipitous in a haunting sort of way, is before I even boarded the fuming plane this evening, I was already thinking about my next blog post. I was going to write about how back in 2009 my wife and I, along with the entire BYU Folk Dance team, once boarded a plane in San Fransisco headed for Beijing, and we had to turn the plane around and head back.

And tonight, for the first time since then, it’s happened again.

Yes, believe it or not, this is not the first time something like this has happened to me. Although tonight’s experience was much calmer than the experience from 15 years ago.

Fifteen years ago I was attending Brigham Young University and had a wonderful opportunity to be a part of the BYU International Folk Dance Ensemble. It was on that folk dance team that I had met and married my wife. In May of 2009, we were 5 months freshly married and sitting next to each other on a plane. It was exciting! We were heading to China for a month to perform in multiple cities from Beijing to Hong Kong. Also, for the only the 2^nd time in my life, I was crossing the Pacific Ocean on a plane. It was going to be a long flight.

The flight left late at night, so we settled in and, similar to tonight, I dozed off pretty quickly. About 30 minutes into the air I happened to wake up and I looked out the window.

And what did I see?

Flames.

Bursting!... From engine three.

Ok I don’t know if it was really engine three. But I did know there were 4 engines. And one of them was on fire.

My wife was already awake and panicking, grabbing my arm. I was still in a dream-like stupor, not even sure if what I was seeing was real. I sat there for a minute, staring out the window, and then calmly said to my frantic wife, in an overly casual and non-concerned voice:

“Everything’s fine. They have three more engines.”

I turned my head away, closed my eyes, and tried to go back to sleep.

The plane ended up turning around, going in circles for a while dumping fuel into the ocean so we could land back in San Fransisco and catch a different plane in the morning.

Obviously, and fortunately, everything did in fact turn out fine. Nobody was hurt, the flaming engine was shut off, the plane landed safely, and the BYU folk dance team, as well as many other passengers to Beijing, were mildly inconvenienced in their travel plans.

Oh yeah and my wife became much more anxious about flying for the next 10 years or so.

I learned some things about myself then.

1. I was a terrible husband. I went back to sleep and left my wife alone to panic in silence as the flaming engine roared outside the window, our eminent doom assured.

2. Don’t binge watch LOST before getting on an airplane flying over the Pacific Ocean (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42…).

3. I’m a conflict avoider. I’ll do anything and everything I can to avoid any kind of tense, anxious, scary, dangerous, contentious, or difficult situation. I can literally face the flames of death right outside my airplane window and convince myself that everything’s juuuuust fine.

For most of my life, I saw this as a positive aspect of my personality. I’m an optimist! I look on the bright side! I’m Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky-Nothing-Ever-Gets-Me-Down! Isn’t that how we’re supposed to be?

To some extent, yes. It’s a good trait to have. There’s nothing wrong with a positive outlook on life.

But there does come a time where trying to convince myself “Everything’s Fine” is not the answer. In the fifteen years since the flamey plane ride, up to today’s fumey plane ride (as I write this, I’m currently on plane number 2 now, so far so good…) I have learned over and over again that everything is not, in fact, fine.

Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s more than fine and things are great! Other times things just plain suck. They’re miserable. And sometimes, well sometimes you just wish that everything would end. You can’t see how you’re ever going to get out of this mess you’re in and it would be so much easier to just disappear off into oblivion. Put me out of my misery. I can’t endure this.

But here’s the thing. You can. And like most things, it just takes practice. Because I spent my entire life avoiding conflict, I sucked at dealing with conflict when I was forced to. And guess what, if you’re married, or in any kind of meaningful, committed, and lasting relationship, conflict is the main event!

And guess what else? Conflict is GOOD. It creates friction. It allows us to be human. It helps us feel more deeply. It gives us an opportunity to test our patience. To be more understanding. To open our minds to other ideas. I’m glad I’ve had conflicts. I’m glad I’ve had to learn how to sludge my way through the tense, anxious, scary, dangerous, contentious, difficult, and even heart wrenching situations.

I’m no expert by any means, but I’m slowly making my way from “Everything’s fine” to “Bring it on.” From conflict avoider to conflict navigator. From passive observer to assertive practitioner.

I’ve got a long way to go, and there’s a lot of years ahead to get there still. But as I sit here 35,000 feet in the air, crammed in my middle seat, my elbow and human rights currently stripped from me, perhaps I can look out the window to my right and see in the distance a China-bound plane, and a newly married man, heading out over the Pacific Ocean, and there’s a lot of things I could say to him about what lies ahead, but instead I’d just say: good luck buddy…

…everything’s going to be just fine.

Oh and one more lesson I’ll probably learn before the end of this trip:

I don’t got friends, I got family.

Thanks Vin.