2/5/2011
Last fall, while inside of an airport, I noticed this beautiful and confident woman, and thought to myself “Wow, she’s got her life figured out like no one I’ve ever seen.” I was just shocked by the way she carried herself, as if she was totally happy, complete, knew herself, had her own principles, and believed that she could do absolutely anything. I noticed this all from the way she walked, alone.
On the plane, she happened to sit a row ahead of me on the other side of the isle, where I noticed her, from the moment she sat down, scribbling passionately in a journal. It was clear that something was on her mind. I had already pulled my journal out, ready to do some writing of my own when this crazy idea came to me.
I tapped this woman’s shoulder and said, “Excuse me! I saw that you keep a journal. So do I, and I was just curious to see if you might be willing to switch journals with me while we’re flying. You don’t even have to tell me your name, and besides, we’ll probably never see each other again after this flight, so why not?” She reacted to my proposal with this half-surprised, half-intrigued glance, and after six or seven seconds passed by, she said, “Okay.”
So I handed her my journal, and she handed me hers, each of us fathoming the peculiarity of the exchange, feeling this combination of excitement and vulnerability. No one had ever read my journal before and I’d just given it away for someone else to view entirely at their leisure. I was scared to disclose realizations, experiences, knowledge (could I venture to say secrets?) so personal, to another human being, but also relieved by our anonymity, and in a strange way, I was delighted to share my interior reality with someone else. Wondering if she felt similarly, I opened her journal and began reading it from the beginning.
What I found was astonishing. The confident woman I’d been admiring inside of the airport was absolutely an emotional mess. Almost every entry was about another man who’d let her down, about her inability to find happiness alone, about her disbelief in her power to ever become independent. As I read her journal, her frustration, sadness, anger, all leapt from the page, powerfully reminding me that I wasn’t reading a work of fiction, but someone’s journal—the journal of someone sitting five feet away from me.
I could tell from the way she wrote that I was learning things about her through reading her journal that not even her best friends knew about her. It was shocking to think that over the course of a short flight, I’d become the person in this woman’s life that knew her best. I tried to forget this and just kept reading.
All of her hopes, dreams, successes, failures, opinions, strengths, weaknesses, were there upon the pages of this book in my hand. I briefly turned away from it, peering over her shoulder to see what entry of mine she was reading, and what her reaction was. I had no success, so I read on, to her last entry, September 8th 2010, the entry she’d abandoned mid-sentence to take part in our rare exchange.
Twenty minutes later, when each of us were finished, she turned around in her seat, smiled at me and said, “Well, nice to meet you.” I exploded with laughter, replying that it was nice to meet her, and realizing for the first time that this woman, who had absolutely nothing to hide from me, I didn’t even know her name. But before I could ask, the pilot’s voice appeared over the intercom, announcing our descent into Cincinnati. Leaning over to make her word’s audible, she said “So…what did you think?”
I left my seat to occupy the empty one next to her, where we proceeded to have a discussion about each other’s problems, fears, insecurities, loves, dreams, desires, and goals. Throughout our discussion, we referred to people and events in each other’s lives as if we’d been there and known them all along. Our conversation was frightening and liberating at the same time, as if I was saying to myself “Oh shit, you know everything about me. There’s nothing for me to conceal from you… But actually, I’ve been waiting all along for someone to learn everything about me. I’m so glad you’re here.”
In the fifteen minutes it took for our plane to land, we laughed, argued, opened up even more, sat in silence, and we empowered each other. I learned that day that, to empower someone else requires that you give up some of your power. That day, each of us gave power and was given power. Each of us gave a journal and was given a journal.
When our plane landed, it was as if I was nearly bumped out of a dream. This woman, talking with me about the things which have mattered the most to me in my life over the past three months, who was she? Was she even real? Her journal, at least, seemed so real, so human. It was so human of her, of us, to be scarred inside, yet walk as if we’d never been pinched.
When our turn came, we jumped into the line of strangers exiting the plane, the two of us still strangers to each other, but not quite. Once we reached the terminal, I looked up for my directions. The baggage claim was ahead, all other terminals to the right. What was for me, a final destination, was for her merely a stepping stone. Realizing that this odd, extraordinary experience would soon come to an end, we looked at each other, not quite sure of how to punctuate an event so unexpected and remarkable.
“You know all of my friend’s names, all of my family member’s names, x-boyfriend’s names. Anyone that means or meant something to me in my life, you know their name. But you don’t even know mine,” she said to me, smiling. “And you haven’t even asked.” She was right, I hadn’t, and without even knowing so. I had been so invested in our conversation, so consumed by the moment, that I forgot to ask the simplest of questions that people normally ask when meeting others for the first time. “Would I know you any better if I knew your name?” I replied. “Hmm. Maybe not, but you’d be able to gain my attention from afar the next time you see me in an airport.”
She took a step closer, looked at me and said. “Look. All of the things you want to do with your life, I believe you can do them. You have a good heart and a humble spirit. They’ll take you anywhere you want to go.” “Thank you,” I replied. “I believe in you. I know you’ll find what you’re looking for. What you’re looking for might even find you first.” “Thank you,” she replied. “Good luck to you…man.” “Haha, good luck to you…miss.”
She turned around and headed in the direction of Concourse B, walking the same confident and sexy walk that first caught my attention.
