Genuinely Sorry

About halfway back from the Island, the cabin crew was suddenly all hurrying back and forth, up and down the aisle with an untethered frightening urgency.   The lead flight attendant came over the speaker.  The other flight attendants were leaning over particular rows, leaning toward the windows. 

"We have an unusual situation, everyone,"  she said.  "We're just about to pass by Cape Canaveral, and if everything goes as expected, we should be able to see the rocket launch any minute now."

It seemed as if we had gone from a truly potentially horrible situation (a plane crash? a situation on the plane?) to genuinely the best case scenario that I could never come up with even if I sat and tried to come up with the best case scenario.  

Seriously, do you have any idea how much time and effort I put into my Apollo Mission Portfolio in 6th grade?  It was literally my favorite project ever.  I am secretly still planning on going to space eventually, though I'll deny that I said so if you spread this rumour.  

And then she crackled on again:

"Anyone on the left hand side of the cabin should be able to look out their windows and we are genuinely sorry to those of you who are sitting on the right hand side of the cabin, although the clouds on the other side of the plane are very beautiful and you have a full moon which I'm sure you've noticed close to the horizon."

Was she kidding?  I get the moon as a consolation prize? 

I took this picture though of the strangers across the aisle and you can see that the one guy is just scrolling through all those pictures that he got of the rocketship bursting through the clouds.  

You know I always take pride in the fact that I am happy when something good happens to someone else and not to me.  There's a sanskrit word for it:  mudita. Taking joy in the happiness of others. Vicarious joy from another's well being. It's not work for me to feel this happiness in general, but usually when I'm singing the praises of mudita it's a situation or hypothetical wherein great fortune has befallen some ONE person. 

Is it just me or does it feel harder to muster all that vicarious joy when 50% of the plane got to have all that happiness and 50% of us did not? It almost feels a little more like the kind of situation that should result in a class action lawsuit, right? 

This happened a few weeks ago, and I'm only posting about it now, but I'm not holding a grudge.  

You may have heard that I'm a grudge holder and I am working on that, but I have no grudge here.  I am genuinely happy that I have this beautiful picture of me not seeing the rocket launch. 

I am. 

Really.