I was invited to sit in a window seat next to a couple with a baby! I thought Okay, I see how this flight is going to go…
The momma assured me , my baby is quiet, so I sat down. We quickly started to roll down to the takeoff strip.
Sometime after my hour long nap, I look over to the couple and baby who are all still napping and smiled.
I quietly lifted the window screen to look out, I saw the mountains first and took a picture which never quite captures the beauty. I begin an annoying pattern of reading and looking out to see how long before we see the circles, that’s the part of the ground I see after the patchwork which means civilization is close.
Upon one of my looking outs, I see something black in the distance and wondered what I was looking at. The “black” thing is moving closer and I see that it’s smoke. That is when I notice our plane starting to turn? I’m like why is he turning and just as I thought that, the black smoke became another plane and it whooshed by somewhere “under” us?
I have no idea how close we were to a possible near miss ? But I have never experienced turning at what might’ve been 35000 feet.
I look around and nobody says anything or gasps, so I just keep looking outside at nothing and that’s when I start thinking about a possible headline that starts: Two jets near miss on a flight to Texas.
Of course it didn’t happen, and I am grateful, for not being part of a headline, but I’m also grateful that I experienced a moment where I realized I’m happy to be alive, happy not just good, content or satisfied, but happy.
What we don’t know might’ve killed us. This happens probably more than we know, so even if for a moment, be happy. You are, I think, even if you don’t “feel” it all the time.
~peace
I Write 