It’s 11:15 p.m. and I am standing at the Eva Airways desk in the San Francisco airport. I have just found out that my valid passport isn’t valid enough. Your passport, my passport, actually expires six months before the expiration date. Go figure.

I’m not getting on that plane; I’m not going to Bali. Is this a disaster or is this perfect? This is what I will decide. If my not going to Bali because my passport is invalid is a disaster, then everything that happens from here on out, in fact, everything that led up to this moment, will also count as a disaster. I will have wasted time and money on a flight to San Francisco, and the $85 it cost me for the shuttle from Corvallis to Portland. I am missing out on at least four days of my trip to Bali, which could end up being many more days if I can get my passport renewed. Eva Airways doesn’t fly to Bali every day. Many of their flights are already full.

One of my main purposes for this trip is to be a part of a planning committee for the Bali Institute for Global Renewal. Marcia Jaffee, the president, organized the conference in 2006 with Desmond Tutu as the featured speaker. It is a great honor and privilege to be part of an incredibly amazing group of people who are trying to unite indigenous wisdom and Western ingenuity and create leaders all over the world. Saying that I want to be there for this planning session is a gross understatement. In some ways everything in my life has been leading to this gathering.

Not that anything is at stake here.

This snafu could be a disaster, or, if I decide that somehow my Angel Committee is playing with me again, then I will start to look for Perfection, and my mistake will be turned into a Discovery.

It is now the early hours of November 19, my daughter’s 31st birthday. I have a ticket to fly back to Portland at 7 AM. I decide there is no point getting a hotel room, so I tried to sleep around the arm rests on the chairs, the armrests that are permanently there I’m assuming to stop people from sleeping. The gentle staff of Eva Airways has been incredibly kind and helpful.

The woman who pushed my luggage cart from the international terminal back to the domestic terminal tells me that she is grateful that I have been so pleasant about it all. “Many people yell and scream at us,” she tells me.

“As if it’s your fault Indonesia won’t let me come, even though my passport is valid,” I say to her.

This reminds me of the time I was a counselor at an elementary school in Corvallis, Oregon and a man got a ticket for speeding in front of the elementary school. He came in and yelled at the playground assistant, and then he yelled at the principle. How he does anything is how he does everything. I’m glad am not married to this man.

I try to sleep, but I am worried about the safety of my luggage, and I can’t get comfortable. The airport is surprisingly deserted. It occurs to me that, if I am to go on my newly booked ticket on November 23 in the wee hours of the morning, I must get my passport fixed tomorrow, November 20. I had better find out what I can find out now, so I will know what to do when I get back to Portland.

There is no free WiFi in the San Francisco airport. To get WiFi I have to fill out a lot of information and pay $7.98. Because I am so tired, because I am so disoriented, and because I am legally blind, filling out this form at 2:30 AM is difficult. My username is incorrect. Start over. My password is too short. Start over. My password doesn’t agree with my confirmation password. Do it again.

Putting in numbers in my computer is challenging for me, so re-entering my credit card data every time is taxing. And then it gets funny. It has to get funny, or I will add to my own suffering.

Just as I get online and find the site that has been recommended to me, a site that will help me expedite getting my passport renewed, a man walks by. I haven’t seen anyone in at least an hour. “Is there Internet in its airport? He asked me. He looks tall and a bit disheveled to tell the truth. But there’s something about his voice I trust, something in his demeanor that seems deeply and profoundly human to me.

“Yes,” I tell him, “there is Internet here.” I don’t tell him the sad story of how many times it took me to get on the Internet. “Would you like to check something?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he says to me, “I would like to check a little something.”

“I am legally blind,” I tell him, “and I could use some help on a website. We could just make this a win-win situation.”

He agrees and sits down beside me, and I start to cry a little. “I’ve been really great up to now,” I tell him. “It’s just that your voice is so kind….”

It turns out he is a man who travels around the world healing people. He tells me his name, which I can’t remember, but it is wonderful and musical. I ask him what his name means. He replies by exhaling a long soulful breath that sounds like wind in a tunnel. Cool.

He gives me a healing session. He puts his long-fingered, wickedly long-fingered, hands around my eyes and seems to pull energy out while he breathes. It is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

Here we are, the two of us, alone as far as I can tell in the domestic terminal of the San Francisco airport. I am blind and he is a healer. Is this starting to look like Perfection yet?

All the clothes he is wearing have been given to him, he tells me. “I can count on one hand all the clothing that I’ve purchased in the last five years.” I believe him. He tells about his girlfriends, he tells me about his mom. He tells me he has been on television a few times and that he has written a treatment and has a producer interested in a reality show. I think he will make it happen. I can see him being wildly successful on television. He has a presence that is amazing.

I share with him that I do some energy healing. “Sometimes when I put my hands on people I have visions, I tell him. I don’t say that I am seeing Truth, I just tell people what I see if they want to hear.”

He gives me his hands and asks me to hold his hands and tell me what I see. At first I feel a river flowing through us and then I feel very strongly that he is a tree. His hands are like tree limbs. He is like a character out of Lord of the Rings.

“I see you as a tree. Does that resonate with you?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he says, “I am a tree.”

We part ways shortly thereafter, the terminal fills up, and I catch my seven o’clock plane back to Portland, Oregon. The chances of getting my passport renewed the next day were slim and expensive. “What is, is,” I keep chanting to myself. “Whatever happens, I will deal with it. If I go to Bali on Monday, great. If I can’t go to Bali on Monday, I’ll figure something else out.”

This story is not over. Tomorrow I will finish telling you about my adventure, but I will end today’s post with just two more bits of information.

The first story of Perfection: On the plane back to San Francisco from Portland, the person who sat right next to me was that very same man from the terminal who had spoken so kindly to me. He turned out to be an existential humanistic psychotherapist on his way down to a conference in San Francisco. He is on the board that organizes that conference. His specialty is authenticity and authentic engagement. Let me just say, we have a lot in common.

He suggested that perhaps we could do some work together in Portland. He said he thought I would be great at their conferences, bringing in a whimsical, musical, authentic, on-the-spot songwriting element to the conference. I agreed.

My second story of Perfection: When the woman at the Eva Airways staff told me my passport wasn’t valid long enough to get into Indonesia, I remembered the dream I had told my husband about that morning. I had dreamed that something had gone wrong with some kind of technicality on my trip to Bali. There were lots of people scurrying around trying to solve the problem. When I woke up, I couldn’t figure out what the dream was about, but I had been a little anxious about this trip, which is unusual for me, so I was on alert.

When I learned I wasn’t going to Bali, I realized what my dream had been about. I dreamed that I wouldn’t get to go to Bali because of some technicality, and I didn’t get to go to Bali because of a technicality. Now what is that?

So is my trip cancellation or postponement a disaster or is it perfect? I’m the one who will decide. I’m the one who keeps deciding every moment. How I do anything is how I do everything. How you do anything is how you do everything.

Seeing who you are meant to be involves making choices like this all the time. How are you going to choose to look at your life? How are you going to respond with what your angel committee throws in front of you? Are you going to see Disaster? Or are you going to find Perfection?

More tomorrow on the saga of “Vicki Seeks To Renew Her Passport in One Day.”

Blessings,

Vicki

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.