This month has been a 20,000 mile flying month unfortunately. Back and forth across the ocean, urgencies and need driving me around like a bad chauffeur. But well practiced at this as I am, I make the best of each challenge and each day. At least as I fly over the Atlantic I get some blessed silence in my life. Not required to speak (nor listen) to anyone. Evidently I got the last seat on these last two flights, which at least explains the high price, not to mention that I purchased this flight about 7 hours before departure! Mom and dad have an emergency, 24 hours later I am at their house, travel worn and stained, but here nevertheless, from a quarter globe away.
This ability to live at the speed of sound is something one must guard against. Especially people like me, mobiles, who travel to another country each week for work. Steady dependable systems of work, relationships and structure prevent the worst elements of such a life, from overtaking you. As I was just reading this week on the hbr blog site, in a 75 year study that Harvard did, good relationships make life the healthiest and richest it can possibly be. So I stop and write one of my top 10 buds. I call one up on google hangouts, I FaceTime with another. I take one out to dinner when they show up in my town. I have coffee with another. I go drinking with yet another. I have to consciously and intentionally maintain this critical web of relationships, so that flying doesn't become my epitaph on my tombstone - "Here lies a man who flew everywhere, but had no friends." Or some sick moniker like that. Who wants that to be the definition of their life??
Instead we want the summation of our lives to read, "Here lies a man who changed the world, invested in many, loved well, gave generously, lived with his hands open, transparent and kind to all, someone to imitate." Or something along that gist, as I am no poet. We all want to matter.
