Waiting to Board
January 4th, 2008
Sitting at JFK airport, waiting for my flight to Brussels, I pull out a book and start reading. Two seats over from me, a French woman pulls out a bag of Lay’s potato chips. She and her companion start crunching away, digging their hands into the noisy bag over and over again. I try to refocus my attention on a sentence in the book, and then…crunch. I stare at them, as if my passive aggression will somehow stop them.
Believe me, I realize this is not a thing to get irked over. I know the good French people are entitled to eat their Lay’s in public. But for some reason it irritated me beyond, and that’s why it got me thinking. All I’ve ever heard or read about India is that it’s an “assault on the senses.” Now, if the harmless munching of potato chips tensed me up, how exactly am I going to handle said “assault on the senses?” I don’t know about you, but my senses generally aren’t big fans of assault.
Then, I got to thinking about some advice a good friend wrote to me just before I left. Besides being one of the wisest, most solid women I know, she volunteered with the Peace Corps for two years recently. She offered a lot of wisdom. But to completely paraphrase, since time is waning here in the Brussels airport, she told me to be open — open to a different culture, to a different way of doing things. Because, she said, our way is not necessarily the right way. It’s just one way. She told me to listen, to really listen to the local people I’m working with – what they need, what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Too often, I think, we try to direct or fix. Listening can sometimes be the most powerful, and needed, thing.
And, she told me to breathe.
Breathing. I think that could get me through the impending assault on my senses. Or, ya, know, annoying potato chip crunching.
Ok, they’re boarding us to Chennai now.
