Do I Want to Be Like Me? – My experience with a gracious person
I woke up at 4:30, took a quick shower, drove to the airport, spent 30 minutes waiting in line to have my privacy invaded, and then I boarded my flight. I’ve been flying quite a bit lately and am kind of on autopilot. I’ve become more quirky and picky. For example, I fly on the south side of the plane when flying east in the morning so that I can have the window open without being blinded.
So this morning I boarded my flight, found my row, and sat in my seat. I put my stuff away and started to read. At this point, a skinny person sat next to me. Life is good.
A few minutes later a guy got my attention, he showed me his ticket that said 6D. I was getting ready to show him that 6D was on the other side of the plane when I realized that I was in his seat and the 6A seat I had was the one on the “sun in the window” side of the plane. I not only screwed up his aisle seat, but I had also taken the skinny person’s window seat.
I was reminded about a flight a couple of weeks earlier, only that time things were reversed. Someone was in my seat! I didn’t cause a ruckus but I made it clear that he was in my seat and he moved over and I took my window seat (yes, I was flying west in the evening and so I was on the north side of the plane). During that flight, I learned that this was his second time flying and he hadn’t flown in over 40 years. I felt like a jerk. He would have enjoyed looking out the window and my pettiness made him embarrassed and affected the joy of his flight.
Today, when the man checked his ticket he said, “no problem, I’ll just sit in your seat”. The skinny person didn’t care and so I just stayed in my prime “no sun window seat.” Their graciousness really made me think.
I hadn’t purposefully make screwed things up. I didn’t wake up grumpy or even try to pull one over. I was just plain wrong. But instead of having to explain or correct myself, move and look like an idiot, he just took care of things and reacted quickly and with grace.
Here are my two takeaways from that experience. First, I want to be gracious. Not just on flights when someone is in my seat. I want to assume the best and adjust to other people. Second, I want to not assume the worst about peoples’ mistakes. It is so easy to rush to conclusions and assume motive but that makes for a longer, rougher journey.
How would our interactions with our kids and other family members change if we were gracious instead of going into grumble and rant mode? Would our kids want to be more like us?
I just finished reading Ty Gibson’s book ‘A God Named Desire’. While I was reading your blog I couldn’t help but think to myself what my world would look like if even when I knew the motive and it wasn’t good that I chose to be loving anyway. God’s love for me is proactive, he doesn’t wait for me to love him first or even for me to like him first, he doesn’t keep a record of my mistakes or offenses against him but he pursue’s me with love and it is actively changing me. I just love the thought that if his loving me proactively changes me, what would me allowing his proactive love to flow from me to others look like? I mean look at what a little kindness did for you on the flight 🙂
Great point about loving in a proactive way. It amazes me that we can do it with newborns but past that age we tend to start withholding love if the other party isn’t responding right or their motive may be wrong.
I really connect with what you said about my brushes with Grace changing me. It does what the law could never do for me. Not trying to get all theological but your comments got me thinking a bit deeper.
I’ll have to take a look at Ty’s books. I heard him speak last year and was really intrigued at how he incorporated brain science with how the gospel works.