What If We Deserved Our Luck

A couple months ago, my partner and I were flying from New York to Pittsburgh early in the morning. We woke up with time to spare, got as ready as one gets for a pre-dawn flight, and called a car to the airport. 

When we pulled our groggy eyes and raspy voices out of the cab at Terminal B, I felt off. This is our home airport. I frequently fly Delta. Delta is Terminal C. Every part of me knows that Delta is C. But as we reached for our suitcases, I quelled the unease and (incorrectly) assumed that we’d be able to get to Terminal C from there.

So off we set to security. Thrilled with the non-existent line, we breezed through and only when we paused to look at the departures board did I realize we had made a mistake. We did, in fact, need to be in Terminal C. 

No worries, I thought, approaching an airport worker with a smile. Hi, so sorry, we didn’t mean to enter at Terminal B. We’re hoping to get to Terminal C; what’s the quickest way to do that?

With a customer service smile, she proceeded to tell us about how we’d need to go back out front. Catch the bus. Every 15 minutes. Ride all the way around. Come back in. And so on. 

Sorry, so would we need to go through security again? I asked

Well of course! You’re leaving the airport, aren’t you? 

Insert sense of dread. 

Insert, okay, don’t panic, as we power walked to the exit. Suddenly, our “arriving two hours early” didn’t seem like enough. We ran to the taxi line and pleaded with them to drive us to Terminal C. (Nobody likes a short fare.)

We arrived at the correct terminal, feeling pretty good about how we’d saved lots of time by taking the taxi instead of waiting for the airport bus. Or rather, we were feeling good until we saw the security line. 

We watched the minutes fly by as our feet dragged on and suddenly we were faced with the very real possibility of missing the flight. We began to rationalize. They know we’re in the airport because we did this already. Then we began to strategize. Whoever makes it through, ditch the suitcase with the other and run for the gate and see if they’ll wait. Then we began to accept. Okay, we are almost certainly missing this flight. 

Then, we received the best message you can receive in a moment like this: Your flight has been delayed 45 minutes. 

Miracle of miracles. 

By the time we got through security, our plane would have already taken off. 

As we caught our breath, took bathroom breaks, and leisurely strolled to the gate, I was giddy over the near miss. 

With the LGA → PGH sign illuminated ahead of us, I turned to my partner, Phew, that was crazy. I’ve never been in that situation. That was so, so close. We don’t deserve this. 

And without missing a beat, he replied, Yeah no see that’s the thing. I think we do. I think we do deserve this. 

At first it was a “ha ha; we’re so different” moment but then I got to really thinking about it. What if I allowed myself to believe that I deserve good things? Not in any sort of entitled, the-world-must-serve-me-way, but rather in a sense of noticing when I feel lucky and feeling not just gratitude but also belonging? What if I told myself that good things are supposed to happen to me? What if I believed that I deserved my luck?

How differently would I move through the world if I was open-handed to goodness? How would that influence the way I recognize accomplishment or celebrate wins?

This week, we invite you to notice all your wins—especially the simple ones. You can feel like you lucked out with a cool job but did you not work really hard to get there? You can feel you were at the right place at the right time to meet your partner but do you not continue to put in time and effort to nurture a healthy, loving relationship? 

My partner and I often talk about loving our apartment and how lucky we feel to have found the place. What we don’t talk about as frequently is the Google doc with 87 rows of apartments we considered that is not even all-inclusive of the search. Maybe we create our own luck.

And if we are creating our luck, we can savor it. We can celebrate it. And when we do get unexpectedly blessed by the airport Gods, we can learn to accept that we deserve good things.