Consequence.

I was in airports today.
And airports, fortunately have lounges. All I can say is "Thank you, Dallas-Fort Worth, for letting me eat my yogurt on my ten-minute layover in such luxury."

This week I am in Arkansas, visiting one of my best friends.
And much like travel, airplanes can give one different perspectives on things. They are interesting experiences. Seeing the world below from the angle above...well...amazingly enough....it makes you see things differently.
Rivers and Great Lakes and mansions all seem very small. Flying over an affluent area of a city, in one eye-full you can see 45 houses that are worth more than a million dollars a piece.
In one eye-ful. $50 million.
Now, maybe it is just the society I live in, but sums of $50 million are not usually before my eyes.
Doesn't that sound like such a big amount? People committ heinous crimes to gain sums of money that are much smaller than that.
And yet, seeing it with my eyes, thinking about how many jobs those houses created, thinking of the lives lived in all those houses, well...it all seems very small.
And suddenly I realize that $50 million is nothing at all.
It's only 45 houses.
In one neighborhood, in one city, in one state, in one country, on one continent.
$50 million. Most likely less than 300 people.
How interesting. That amount of money is of virtually no consequence.
It's all so small.
And I can't help but think, "Our whole life is fake, isn't it?" All we see and touch and work our whole lives for---that stuff isn't real. It all is of no value.
I will probably never have $50 million. On land, it's too much, it's too big. It will probably be unattainable to me. And from up there in that plane I am ok with it. I don't want to think it is of any consequence.

I spilled my orange juice on my flight today.
And I had white pants on.
My thoughts were instantly removed from thinking about the nothingness of $50 million to thinking about the gravity of massive proportions of my now orange-spotted pants. My black shirt-dress didn't get touched with a drop, but from the knee down on my right leg, into my gorgeous bag, all over my pink, vintage clutch, on my journal---that all got rained on.
"Aw, shoot" I said aloud and stood up to retrieve some napkins from the flight-attendant-in-drink-service-process.
"Do you want another drink?" she said. I wa brought back to my 35,000 feet reality.
"No, it's of little consequence," I thought.
I love the bag that got spilled on. And I really liked my white pants. So I was really glad my mind had been previously settled.
5 minutes prior to the spill I had thought about $50 million and all the lives of scurrying people involved in that, and how it all really is of little consequence. And I looked at those houses and I thought, "None of those people are taking it with them. THey are only taking "they" with them."
Isn't that the craziest thought? We die, and we don't even take the clothes on our back. All of our stuff, all of our money, all we work for, achieve, and acquire, it all stays here. It all gets left behind.
It's all of little consequence.
How silly would it have been if I had gotten upset about my white pants?
How silly would it be if I got riled about my pretty bag?
How silly is it when we get tense about anything in our houses, bank accounts, closets, garages, offices?

We're not taking it with us.
It's of no consequence. As Ella would say, "Oh honey, it's just stuff."
The only thing of any consequence is that which we take with us. That which isn't just stuff.