Get Your Meal Served First On An Airplane

If you're traveling by plane, an easy way to get your meal served first is to request a special meal when booking your ticket. As a vegetarian this is something I do anyways so it's a nice extra bonus. I'm not sure why they make the special meals first and not last, but I'm not complaining. As long as they correctly record your request you should be all set!

And of course you don't need to get the vegetarian meal.  Airlines usually have several special meal request types depending on the airline.

Thus Have I Done

I figured I should give an update on what I've been up to the last not-so-little while.  Too much has happened to go into detail so I'll just give an outline.  What the heck, I'll start from when I left work.

Here's an outline:

• Summer 2011: Left work. Vacationed.
• Fall 2011: Sampled life in the Rural Northern State.
• New Year-ish 2012: Went to Southeast Asia for simple life and volunteer work.
• Summer 2012: Returned to the US to see a friend get married and see a new nephew.  Spent time reconnecting with friends and family in the Rural Northern State.  Met new group of friends.
• Summer 2013: Began volunteering in the Rural Northern State.  Completed first short meditation retreats.  Hiked a small portion of the Appalachian Trail.  Vacationed.
• Fall 2013 - Spring 2014: Continued and expanded volunteer work.
• Summer 2014 - Winter 2014: Continued volunteer work, but transitioned to working more on my sibling's new house.
• Now: House is finished.  Wrapping things up for the next phase.
• March 2015 - ?: Return to Southeast Asia.  Attend long-term meditation retreat(s).  Whatever else happens.

If A), Then I'll B) Happy

"Once this final thing is in order, then life will be perfect."  Have you ever noticed this thought?  I'm pretty sure we all have it.  It's there (sometimes deep down or in the background), but we have it and believe it.  In fact, we believe so much we usually can't even see it.  We're like fish in water.

But if you are able to just glance at this thought you can see that it's based on the premise that things aren't quite good enough yet.  At that you may say: "Of course we're happy!  But we can always be happier, right?"  And that's the trick.  This almost hidden belief that it's not good enough now because of that missing piece.  How long should we wait?

Then, mercifully we finally get A).  There is some happiness as that feeling of not-quite-right goes away.  However, suddenly we realize as good as A) is, it really won't do without A.1).  So we wait to be happy until we get that next piece.  And somehow we don't realize that we're never really happy.  We put it off until we get the combination of circumstances we like which never seems to come.   We just keep on waiting.

So what's a person to do?  If I can't be happy because I'm always wanting something else, then how can I be happy?  The answer is right there in the question.  We don't need to base our happiness on circumstances and conditions.  We can learn (and it might take some practice) to be happy with whatever is going on right here and now.  Even if we don't like it.  It can be hard.  It seems counter-intuitive.  But when we practice contentment with whatever is present a more spacious and freeing sense of happiness can be found.

If you can be happy no matter if the world is giving you lemons or lemonade, then what's stopping you from always being happy?  It's a happiness not based on conditions.