"I am Blessed"

I make it a point to go out of my  way to try and be nice to those in the hospitality industry.  I've never understood those that treat folks in that industry poorly.  It's likely a power thing, and has always been a good "tell" for me on what a boss, vendor, or other relationship has in their capacity to treat me.  Over time, I've found out a ton about a person just by watching how they treat wait staff, and I'm usually always right.

Hence, on my last flight I shot the lead flight attendant a "Good morning!  How are you?" and a big smile as I made my way through her first class cabin on my way back to coach.  While she was harried by the pre-flight drink orders of her first class passengers (or PFD's as the rarefied call it), she stopped, returned my smile, and said, "I'm blessed, thank you!"

Blessed!  Serving the crabbiest and most demanding people in what can, at times, be an incredibly high stress environment.  Blessed!

What a perspective.  It is so easy to go through life and tick off what is going wrong, and what could be better, and why we should be unhappy.   But rare is the person that takes stock of the whole situation, in an unbiased and objective way, and truly recognizes how blessed they are.  

There is a good lesson here, especially for me, and during this Lent I've been trying to incorporate the lesson into my life.  It starts with prayer and reflection, and ends with me answering the question of "How are you?" with "I am blessed!" regardless of how lousy my day is going.

I have a long way to go before I get to that calm and peace shown to me by that flight attendant.  But she gave me an incredible gift that morning.

It was certainly far better than any PFD I could have received.