Off I go!

I am home sick again from work today, but still plan to fly out tonight to visit my parents and other family members in California; it has been planned for too long to let a cold get in my way. I went for a walk today, thinking it would make me feel better. It did, but it also wore me out, which leads me to know I really am sick. I hope I'm not too tired when I get to California.

Something about flying makes me anxious, but it really isn't the flying itself. I rather like the sensation of this enormous metal box lifting off the ground. I have yet to get over my incredulity that something that large can actually get into the air. It feels like a miracle every time. Maybe it is!

But the sense of disconnectedness from my secure little world couldn't be more stark than when I fly. I must get the the airport on time. I must expose all of my possessions and my person to examination. I must take my shoes and belt off (wait a minute, isn't that what they make you do in jail? Hmmm). I must divest myself of the tchotchkes and bric-a-brac from my pockets that in some part make me uniquely me. I am all but stripped bare. Then on the other side of security I must reassemble myself like C-3PO in the junkyard and take a seat for a long wait until it is time to shoehorn myself into my narrow seat and sit fetally for an hour and a half, wait for a shuttle to take me to my rental car, drive 45 minutes to my brother's house (arriving about three hours after my usual bed time) and flop into bed. What's to disorient me in that?

I think the value in this recitation is the recognition that I have defined a certain set of parameters as my "home" and when these are disrupted, I am no longer at home in my body or my head. I recall one Buddhist teacher (I can't recall now whom) who said, when asked if it would be good to get back home that he was always at home. This is something to aspire to.

The point in this blog, of course, is that I tend to eat my way through my anxiety, and I usually eat something or other from the time I hit the airport until I arrive at my brother's. It may just be those evil snack mixes they sell in the newspaper stands, or it may be a meal from a vendor, but (now that I think about it) I am pretty much eating something the whole time. So, my plan today: I will eat something before I leave, then I will buy a sandwich to eat on the plane (usually half is plenty) then, other than water and my ubiquitous cup of decaf I will eat nothing until breakfast tomorrow. Let's see what happens!

As I have said before about other such events, the point of this exercise is not to keep from eating, but to recognize just how often my eating is a way of evading something else, in this case my anxiety about the displacement I feel. When I come face to face with my demons, they lose their power.

To refuse to face them is to, literally and figuratively, feed them. Today I will not.