We can do better .

It's a concept.

An idea that has been mentioned time and time again, yet doesn't catch on or doesn't keep rolling... but stops.

Dead in its tracks.

Four days ago, I left work two hours early, headed to go meet my aunt so we could drive up to Phoenix and catch a plane with my mother to San fransisco .

After months of training for a 50k, my mother and aunt needed what support they could afford and I, being cheapest and most available, was a shoe-in for the job. (They got a baby sitter and portable entertainment in one!) 

It was a simple enough gig. I remember replaying the expectations in my head as I boarded the plane heading out. 

-Take care of them.

-Give them everything they want. 

-Fill baths with ice before they get back from race.

-Drive them wherever when their legs hurt. 

-Be at the finish line when they complete their 30 miles

-drive back to Tucson on Sunday night (Monday morning)

The list goes on, but the rules were simple. I was to do what they needed, WHATEVER they needed, and my trip would remain free.

Easy enough.

I sat down next to the window on the opposite side of my aunt as the flight attendant began her monologue of proper emergency etiquette . " Thank you for flying with... If happens...pull this. If... Push that. Help yourself first.".

I have heard the speech a million times over, so it was easy to disregard as I popped in my new blue headphones, and laid my head back agains the rest, while gazing out the tiny side window.

I wasn't looking forward to flying, so I prayed instead.

I prayed for God to protect me, and land this plane safely so I can live longer and achieve more . So I can become something. And amount to anything.

The plane began to move.

Faster and faster until eventually we were roaring down a runway, stopping for nothing, slowing for no one.

Pure power.

I felt the front of the plane lift from the ground, which leads me to my favorite part. There is a moment, just as the front wheels take flight, and the bottom wheels drag behind the plane. The world feels as though it is shaking, like it is about to morph into something new, when suddenly you feel a kick- 

A dip-

And then you're completely in the air.

You don't feel yourself moving upward, but you feel the angle, and you see the ground moving further and further away.

It was this moment I looked out of the window.

Tears formed in my eyes for the first time as I really took into account the sight before me. How small I was in such a big world. Theories, concepts, and thoughts all came to my head at once. 

What if? How? When? What about? Why?

The thoughts, alone, took up my whole flight. But suddenly we were landing and the thoughts were left in the sky in which I found them.

I didn't think twice.

In between then and today we had a great trip. They ran, and finished. I ate, a lot. We shopped. We explored. We had a blast!

Then we came back.

I boarded this plane with less eagerness, and stress . Even though I didn't want to fly at night, I knew I would get a nap and it would take up the time.

A nap, I needed. 

This time we were in the first group to load into the plane, and I snagged a seat next to a window once again, this time opposite of my mother.

 "Thank you for flying with... If happens...pull this. If... Push that. Help yourself first."

That line again... I shrugged it off.

This time the plane picked up speed quicker, got to the sky quicker- and I was about to nap it out when I looked outside.

Lights from the city luminated like constellations agains the empty blackness of space, the ocean was not visible by color in the darkness, but just made the image before me fade to a beautiful nothingness.

The yellow gleams mimicing stars in a magestic and unparalleled way, sectioned together like a group of moons from another plantet.

Imagine one of those constellation maps. With the black backround, and yellow colored dots which stand for the stars. The city of San fransisco looked like thousands of constellations filled in with those yellow dots.

Only their dots where glowing.

There are few sights in this world that have taken me for my breath. I mean, I have seen beautiful. I see beautiful every day- but sights like these...

Well, you don't ever forget sights like these.

I have never felt so small.

Then it hit me, 

Right in the stomach, the concept hit me like a ton of bricks aimed directly at my rib cage.

How foolish of me to always be so concerned with myself.

How foolish of anyone!

"Help yourself first?"
"God can you protect ME so I can amount.."

Getting on that plane was a form of me escaping my problems, if even for a short time. Throughout the whole length of the trip, it was all that I was concerned about. MY needs. MY problems.

Problems I could not escape.

Eventually, I knew i would have to come back to the problems I was so eager to leave.

And it occurred to me-

If we focused all of out strength into loving others, then our hurt be a lot less destructive. 

What i mean is this:
World-wide some of the most common advice given is to LOVE.
If we all focused all of our strength on pouring that love into others, if that became our only concern and our only motivation for doing things, then our "individual worlds" would be a lot less shaken by the hand of our own defeats.

And im not talking changing the world, though a movement like that definitely could. Im talking in your personal life, Loving others in return makes it easier to love yourself.

Problems that seemed big, get smaller.
Joy is more prominent because hurt fades away.

I thought about the millions of peoples living around those lights, in those mysterious worldly constellations and how a world of people who were as self-consumed as i had been would create a world of the most dangerous type of hate.

But if we love, we have hope, passion, joy, faith, reason, loyalty, honestly, peace, compassion, laughter, and power...then fear, pain, and sadness cannot defeat us. For love is more powerful still.

I don't know.

 as I exit that plane, and move on my way- I haven't forgotten . I think of it as a sign, a wake up call for me personally. 

We can do better.