Friday, March 21, 2014

"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.    

1 comment:

  1. Incredible outlook.

    I also like Dave Ramsey's "Better than I deserve".
    Dusty and I lived/worked at a bed and breakfast in college and we'll never forget working a wedding where a toddler dropped a napkin. When he bent over to pick it up to throw in the trash basket that was right in front of him, his mother looked at me and said "don't worry, the help will get it". I often wonder how that kid turned out with a lesson like that from his mother.

    ReplyDelete

Please feel free to include any thoughts you may have. Know, however, that kiddos might be reading this, so please keep the adult language to yourself. I know, for me to ask that language is clean is a stretch...

yeldogpat-20