Meeting Brooke on the way to Osaka

I'm never sure, but I always hope when I make that seemingly random seat selection when checking-in for a flight that I am making an intuitively guided decision. Guiding me potentially towards a remarkable and unexpected journey be it through the person I meet sitting next to me, or the person it saves me from sitting next to who might otherwise have left me exhausted and annoyed for the entire eight hours. 


For all the plane travel I have done in my life, and there has been a great deal, I never lose that delicious feeling of adventure that comes with boarding a plane. Yes, even on a one hour commute to Sydney for work, I get that feeling. I wrote a few months ago, on return from one of the most significant trips of life about being a tourist of your own life, and in the time since then I admit it has been hard to hold on to that feeling. There has been a lot of stress, a lot of demands and not much down time. 


Even the anticipation of this trip (albeit for work) to Osaka was failing to get me excited about the adventure of the new and unknown. In fact, in the days leading up to my departure, I was downright anxious, uptight and fearful. I am pretty confident with travelling, but every detail this time round was causing me nauseating concern.


My flight to Osaka took me via the Gold Coast. The domestic route had failed to calm me and I was in a mild panic about currency conversions and how I was ever going to navigate my way from the airport to the train to the hotel without becoming hopelessly lost and having to take up a life of begging on the streets in Japan (if Osaka has beggars by the way I am yet to see one). I was a mess.


Somewhere in the fog of my stress I did at least remember to call on the runner guides as described by Sonia Choquette. These guides, part of the system of spirit beings available to you in your daily life, are indigenous to the place you are travelling to, and prepare smooth passage for you in whatever your tasks. They can do this as they have special and privileged knowledge of the place. I call on runner guides at the start of most every day. I boarded the plane and for a moment forgot my self-imposed misery as I took my very happy seat in the front row of the entire plane (thank you Jetstar for having a sale on business class tickets).


I glanced surreptisioulsy down as I loaded my bags in the overhead compartment, taking in a quick peek of my in-flight neighbour. I needn't have been coy. From the moment I was seated I don't think Brooke and I were quiet for more than twenty minutes together of the entire eight hour flight. Brooke was flying to Osaka via Cairns for a 2 day rendezvous with a man she had not seen for two years. A yoga teacher and all round joyous free spirit, Brooke and her Osaka based friend had first met in Goa when Brooke was first immersing herself in her yoga practice. Brooke had also just completed a 4 week yoga teacher training program the day before this flight. She was radiant and alive and on a mad and lovely adventure. It was refreshing just being in her vibrant energy, but it turns out Brooke and I has much in common too, having both grown up in the Middle East and sharing a similar spiritual philosophy.


I realised then with a quiet smile to myself that my random seat selection all those weeks ago had been divinely inspired, as I had hoped, and that this lovely, courageous (for many potent and sad reasons, as well as her willingness to fly eight hours for a 2 day fling), spontaneous woman was a gift to me. As the flight went on I learnt more about Brooke's story and the great sadness and trauma she had survived in her life. But it was no longer what motivated her, and it wasn't something she ran from at all. It wasn't even what defined her. She was not afraid. And by the time I landed in Osaka and had waved Brooke off to her terribly exciting tryst, neither was I. At the airport  I met two fellow conference participants, all of us having flown in from different parts of the world, who just happened to be staying at the same hotel as me. Disembarking from the train, and with no small amount of help from the incredibly friendly and generous locals, we made our way into the humid night and safely to our residence.


And since then, of course, everything I have needed has been readily available and easy to navigate. Finally, I am having an adventure. There is always plenty to be afraid of if we want to be, and I sure had been rolling around in it, but being reconnected to the expansive, wide-eyed adventurer inside of me has done much to send that fear packing. I am reminded through the lovely girl sharing that flight with me that life is what you make it. Thank you Brooke for being awesome, and in turn reminding me of my awesome too.