On one of my recent flights, I had an interesting experience.  We were boarding the flight and I was in the very first row (bulk head), aisle seat.  Because I have literally flown over one million miles on United, I was one of the first to board.  Eventually, the gentleman in the window seat boarded the plane.  I jumped up to accommodate him.  Unfortunately, there was no overhead baggage space available for him to stow his bag so he had to go a couple of rows back to find a spot for his luggage. 

If you have ever found yourself two rows behind your seat during the airplane boarding process, you know how hard it is to “swim upstream” back to your seat.  It is also hard to the boarding passengers to squeeze by the rogue salmon headed against the current.  To accommodate him and avert the bottle neck for the boarding passengers, I decided to stand in the aisle so he could stow his bag and return to his seat.  The woman behind me literally tried to crawl around me.  I said, “Hold on just a second, (motioning toward the other passenger) he’s going to have to come back this way.”  The woman continued trying to shove her body and bags passed me.  “If you can wait just a second, it will be easier once he returns up here.”

“Why are you blocking me?” the woman said aggressively, just as the man returned to the front row and took his seat.  As I sat down I once again turned to the woman and said, “I was just holding up the line to allow him to return to his seat rather than have to climb past people.”  “Oh, I just thought you were rude,” came her terse reply.

I sat there and thought to myself, “Who would assume that another human being would block everyone else’s boarding process for no reason?”  “What kind of perspective must you have on the world to presume such a selfish and irrational act of a stranger?”  As I contemplated those questions it reminded me of how our own outlook shapes the reality that we experience.  I can’t help but think that this woman must live in a very ugly, selfish world lacking in compassion.  Somehow, she has constructed a way of thinking (a schema) that people naturally are rude.  What has happened in her life that created this way of thinking, I wondered.

How sad that she doesn’t realize that the world she lives in is essentially the construct of how she chooses to interpret it.  With effort, she can rewire her mind to expect strangers to be sympathetic, considerate…nice.  As I said in my first book, Live and Learn or Die Stupid, we are all delusional; might as well make it a good one.  Have a great day and do something kind for a stranger.