Keeping score

Are you ahead in life?

Recently, I took a long international flight. Although I’m a relatively small person, the cramped nature of airline seating still affects me. You don’t have to have long legs or a wide torso to find air flights uncomfortable. The seating space, even on the aisle, feels tight. People bump into you. Elbows jockey for positioning on arm rests. The curvature of the seat back and head rest makes everything turtle inward. Joints get stuck. The breath is constricted. It is difficult to keep a normal alignment of anything.

So, for my recent trip, I upgraded to a seating class called premium economy. While it wasn’t a whole lot of money to upgrade, from the perspective of being cost-conscious, it wasn’t a small amount either. But it had benefits. Our section had wider seats. There was more leg room. Food was provided off a menu.

This wasn’t business class; those people pay a lot more for the pleasure of reclining and having their own toilets. And who knows what first class looks like because folks in first class turn left on boarding an international flight as the everyone else turns right. Still, this upgrade was something. It was “premium”. It had footrests. It was better.

How quickly the experience of something better can lead to the perception of actually being better! Yes, there’s a certain feeling of financial entitlement; I paid for this, you didn’t, and so don’t give me that look when I walk past you headed to use the same airplane toilet. But, sadly, there is more. There is, in some small way, the “I’ve worked hard in my life to be able to pay for this so don’t give me that look when I walk past you headed to use the same airplane toilet”. There is even – dare I say it – a sense of personal entitlement, the self-satisfied feeling of having made it further in life than others, than the masses, than everybody seated in regular economy. I am a bit ahead in life. I have succeeded. I deserve to be seated in “premium”.

The entitlement perspective on a plane has exceptions, for sure. Some people simply are bigger and need more space. Some have travel anxiety. Some are ill. Some in fact need to be alert on arrival because work or a life situation requires a heightened state of readiness after disembarkation.

Still, there is a shift in mindset. It isn’t massive, it’s not necessarily constant and it is, perhaps, barely perceptible. But the segmentation is there. For the most part, passengers on airplanes are segmented based on financial means. And financial means is, unfortunately, often associated with the self-satisfaction of feeling that you or I have “made it”. The flight travel experience can provide a very visual and palpable cue of where a person is on the western scale of life progress.

I hear you objecting. “Wait a minute! Life is more than making money. It is more than feeling physically or situationally comfortable. There is emotional growth, spiritual progress. There is purpose.”

I agree. I am, however, admitting the difficulty I sometimes have of sensing that purpose and not trying to quantify it. My experience has patterned me to seek milestones, to evaluate myself in terms of progress. I look at my daily circumstances, my work, my relationships, my bank statements, my health, the image of myself in the mirror and the depth of compassion or self-awareness that I see in my face and eyes. I look at all these things and I wonder: am I making the most of myself? Am I getting better? Am I living up to some intangible potential that is the essence of being me?

I know – there probably isn’t a score for living. I’m just admitting that I wouldn’t mind it if there was. Imagine receiving, once every year, a glimpse of that score. Wouldn’t that be nice? A number written in the clouds, a single letter grade on a postcard, even a word whispered to me in my sleep. I sometimes would take anything. It would be helpful to have an objective assessment of my value and how useful an investment I have been for the planet, for the universe, for evolution, for God, Allah, Buddha and everything the human species has ever called the prime mover in the world.

Am I approaching enlightenment? Do I have deserve a spiritual afterlife?

The core of our experience is probably not about a score – at least as long as our consciousness is permitted or is able to inhabit the human form. It is, most likely, about grappling with the absence of such an external evaluation, at least as long as we breathe. And yet something tells me that there is or there should be, after the last breath, some review, analysis, or score. I can’t accept that the heart stops, the lights go out, and there is nothing. I can’t accept that there won’t be some reckoning when I disembark from the final ride from “this” to “that-which-is-more-than-this”, that which is more than nothing.

One thing I feel certain of: my ability to sit in premium economy will not be part of such a reckoning. And I suspect that there won’t be different classes of seating arrangements on whatever form of transportation is used to take me to whatever it is that comes next.

A memory suddenly reminds me that I may be wrong about all this. Just before he died, my father told me that he was worried of how he would be received when his spirit approached the gates of heaven, as he believed in it. “Are you worried about what St. Peter will have to say?” I asked, smiling. My dad tilted his head and aimed a look at me from the depths of his soul. “I’m more worried about your mom will have to say.”

Are we supposed to help each other keep score? Is that the scoring system readily available to me, each and every day? If so – Yikes! The thought of evaluation from fellow humans, from people I love – from you – is somehow more unsettling than the notion of receiving a progress report from an all-forgiving supreme being. You are living something similar to me. Your review won’t come with any warranty, assurance, or guarantee. I think I have more life to live before I’m ready for that sort of feedback. It may be too accurate. It definitely won’t be the grade I’d like to receive.

Because I’m a guy still trying not to feel superior to people who can’t afford premium economy on an airplane. Please bare with me then while I prepare myself to stop worrying about places on life’s seating chart. I need to earn your trust. I need to get ready to offer you my seat.

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