Boarding Impass

On the morning that I was leaving for Fort Lauderdale, I could not print my boarding pass at home, then I could not print it at the self check in machine at the airport. Even the woman at the counter had difficulty printing it but I finally got it in my hands and passed through security and went to my gate with a bit of unease. At the gate, I looked for my boarding pass but could not find it anywhere so I asked the man with a Delta uniform if he could print me another one and at the same time I inquired about being bumped from the flight. He told me there was the possibility that I could get bumped and asked me to wait to see if the plane was overbooked. He would call out my name. I stood there with my backpacks slung over one shoulder while my mind tried to scratch out a pattern. It seemed that this was the moment that I could prove something to myself about the nature of a phenomenological universe. In my mind, there were only 2 options for how to look at this picture: I obviously was having obstacles getting the boarding pass and keeping my hands on it because I had such trouble printing it and then losing it, so if I got bumped it would indicate that I was never meant to board this plane. The other option was that If I didn't get bumped then that would mean there is actually no pattern to any of these circumstances and I just made useless and unnecessary assignments to the events that transpired; I made it up in my head. So, I’m standing there alert like a lion about to pounce on her prey because I know that in just a few minutes I am going to get an answer that I’ve been hunting down my whole life. Finally, the man at the counter called my name and informed me that they did not need my seat so I would board the plane. However, he was bumping me up to first class because I offered up my seat.

At the great risk of constructing yet another useless reality – I might suggest that the either/or scenarios I put together in my mind did not leave room for a third option, which went beyond my expectations. J.C. Cooper who wrote Yin & Yang, The Taoist Harmony of Opposites says, “All duality and polarity calls for a resolving third, which is on a plane above the opposites and acts as a catalyst, bringing about a state of equilibrium between extremes….It requires the reconciliation third to rescue the two powers from eternal tension; the interplay and interaction of the third ensures the ultimate completion. I’m not exactly sure if J.C. Cooper’s words apply to my experience, but hopefully I’ll get more chances to give test questions to the universe. If anyone reading this has any answers please clue me in by commenting.