Lyrics: Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon? / We can sing a song and sail along the silver sky.
Picture this: the ten and a-half-hour flight from Germany/Amsterdam arrived SeaTac airport and an older woman walked over the Jet Way, past waiting wheel chairs, glad to be mobile again. She knew this airport in contrast to Schiphol in Amsterdam and busy Frankfurt International where she had gratefully accepted wheel chair assistance around those long concourses. She checked herself into the USA at a computer kiosk down at Customs where she had to claim her two suitcases. She hadn’t thought of that. The lines were long, back and forth in roped off lines, pushing and pulling her luggage until she got to the security officer waiting to get her entrance ticket. “Bye bye,” he said. Cocky guy. Up in the elevator and over and down the escalator where she lost control of her luggage and down she went flat on her back. Many hands of help were there immediately and she was pulled upright in seconds, no damage done other than to her pride.
Why did I walk past the help that was waiting at the plane? In my eagerness to get off the plane and stretch my legs, I didn’t think ahead nor was I thinking as an elder needing assistance. Pride? If so, it comes before the fall and it landed me on my backside.
Pride. I believe we elders need to think on that. There’s two types of pride, e.g., the Rose Man took pride in his roses. I take pride in my family. Then there’s false pride, e.g., failing to admit when you need help and refusing to accept help when it’s offered because it might show weakness. My mistake in the airport was failing to recognize that I needed help, that I’m not forty, fifty, or sixty anymore. I need to learn to think like one in their late seventies. And how does one think that way? Proudly. No pretending that you’re anything more or less than you are. It’s a lesson in authenticity.
Lyrics: My beautiful, my beautiful balloon (or airplane)/ Suspended under a twilight canopy/ We’ll search the clouds for a star to guide us. (5th Dimension)
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