You Can't Get There from Here

I was sitting in an airport in New York waiting for my plane. I struck up a conversation with a man who told me he wanted to restart his life. He was from Minnesota and was headed for a job interview in Alaska. He and his wife had split and he had been estranged from her and the children for several years. He told me he would like to relocate to somewhere that was warm but there didn't seem to be any call for what he did in warm areas.

I casually suggested that he could start a new career and work somewhere like Texas. At that point he launched into a long explanation providing tall the reasons why he was ready for everything in his life to change but his career. After five or ten minutes it was all that I could do to keep from nodding off. I realized that all the reasons he had must have made sense to him but they all related to things that had happened in his past. I couldn't see how his past should control what could happen right now.

I listened for several minutes more not really understanding much of anything about his reasons why he had to relocate to Alaska and then I just asked him "Why would anything in your past affect anything that you want to do right now?". I pointed out that he had told me he wanted to go somewhere warm but instead was going to Alaska. It was as though he had told me that even though he was in an airport with flights to anywhere in the world, he could not get to Texas because of where he had come from. He had just made up some rule for himself that said, "I can't go to Texas from here because I am from Minnesota".

We sat quietly for a few minutes and then there was an announcement over the public address system that his flight to Alaska had been canceled due to weather conditions. The man asked me to watch his carry on luggage and went over to the ticket window of his airline. He came back in a few minutes and sat down. There was an animation and excitement about him that I had not seen previously. His whole countenance and demeanor had changed.

He had been carrying a heavy leather coat. "I want you to have this coat he said, I won't be needing it where I am going". He held up the ticket in his right and so that I could read it. It was a one-way ticket to Houston.