This is why I was relieved in a recent Southwest flight when a woman who looked about my age asked if the seat next to me was still available. I offered to hold her tea while she got situated and with this simple act of kindness became her new best friend.
Oh great, I thought. Another talker, and I can't escape. But as the flight went on and we chatted some more, I realized that she was actually a really interesting person and we had a lot in common. She was from a neighborhood in Brooklyn, my parents are from Brooklyn. She went to City University of New York, my grandfather attended the same. We are actually the same age, and are both doctors, though she's the real kind.
She asked if I have children; I do not, and that is where our lives diverged. She is completing an internship in Maryland for her surgical residency, and flies home to see her husband and two young sons one weekend a month. It's the only weekend off she gets.
The more we talked, the more I knew these things for sure: my new friend is jealous of my freedom to move about my life in any way I choose, she doesn't have much support or kindness in her life, (as surgery is an old boys club where she must constantly fight against stereotype, and her family (including her mother and sister, who are also surgeons) is constantly telling her to choose a different specialty, one that allows her to spend more time with her family), and she is very, very tired.
At one point the conversation petered out not because we had run out of things to say, but because my seatmate had simply fallen asleep. It was that kind of sleep that wasn't very good, because she's sitting upright on a plane, and it was cold, and she was so tired that she couldn't really sleep and instead just swayed back and forth.
At the end of the flight, the lights came on. My new friend's fatigue was really evident. She tried hard to smile. She proudly showed me pictures of her adorable children on her phone, and said that she sacrificed precious hours of sleep last night to do some shopping so she had toys to bring them.
As we said our goodbyes, she walked off the plane in front of me, and could barely walk in a straight line, she was so tired. I have been thinking about this conversation since. Mostly, I have been thinking about choices. I made a choice to chat when I could have begged off. I have also made bigger choices in my life. Not having children was a choice. Not having a spouse with a different view as to how our lives would go is a choice. Not being so career driven as to eclipse all else in life was a choice. I was tired, too, but I walked off that plane standing tall, confident in my choices in life, and with a reinforced love of travel because it is in being in this situation of forced proximity that lends itself to such introspection.
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