Sailing Through This

1/5/15
I'm coming back home to Maine, on a flight that gets into Boston at 10:30pm, having just watched the movie 'Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day' on the plane. It was in Spanish but the message got through.
It is the classic children's story about how everything that can go wrong, does; yet, when the people, despite their circumstance, pull together for each other, even the worst situations work out. The movie showed how the people felt empowered when they decided to turn their situations around, and how making that choice allowed unexpected good results to occur.
That's the kind of can-do positive orientation that I was raised on. I could make excuses for myself and create a sorrowful outlook as I am going back, due to my Dad's being in his last days. I could settle into a melancholy or sentimental sadness or fall into existential drama or regretful thinking, or go into my usual pattern of trying to make sense of it all.
Instead, I intend to keep aware and stay centered and calm. I could reject this as being superficial thinking, but I know that it works.
As the movie built up in its drama the people in the airplane were also going through their own loud, complaining, negative mindsets. It's not bothering me, though, and, instead, I am just keeping steady.  Sometimes you can be in the vortex of howling ferocity and stay at the calm in the center of the storm. I seem to be there.
The weather has been extreme, with cold up north and heavy winds and rain in the islands; and with the full moon, it seems prime for what is going on in this airplane. People seem to be falling into fitfulness all around me.
Prior to boarding, everyone heard, on the airport TV, that a plane was held up for 28 hours on the tarmac, and an elderly person died on board as a result.
That undoubtedly has added to the anxiety in the air, and snappish high voltage behaviors. I don't have to react, it is just what it is right now. It feels as though I will be able to sail through this. If all it takes for me to do this is to make a simple decision to make the best of a 'bad' situation, I am ready. It may not be much, but it is the sanest way of thinking.