The “summer of one-way tickets” begins…

I thought my idea was a novel one.  Buy a ticket and see where it leads you.  Buy the next one as you go – and just let yourself live in the moment. 

The day before my journey began I sat in the park with my friend.  “Advice?” she said, “Look up.  Don’t always be on your phone.  Make eye contact and smile.  It’s good for you and it makes you more open.”

I settled into my teeny tiny seat on the teeny tiny airplane on the first leg of my flight to Tucson.  That is my first destination on this journey because I have a desperate need to see my family and to squish my niece with love.  I figure it’ll offer some stability before I head off into more unknown terrain.  I have a 2 hour gap in Chicago on my way home.  I was talking on the phone when I boarded and then quickly put my things away to settle in for a nap. 

“You live in Chicago?” I looked over to make sure she was really talking to me.  I had been so consumed in my own thoughts I hadn’t even noticed the 60 something woman sitting next to me.   Her eyes were wide behind her thick oval glasses and she clutched a book in her hands.

“Nope, in New York, but headed to Arizona.”  Remember to smile, and look up – my friends words resonated.

“What part?  What part of Arizona?” I fought the thoughts creeping up that said – if you continue to talk you’ll be stuck in conversation for the next hour and 45 minutes to O’Hare. 

“Tucson.”  I smiled, turned away.  

“What?  I live there!” Her crooked smile created wrinkles all around her eyes.  I gave in.

“Really?  What part?  And…do you live in New York?”

She gave me her cross-streets – right near the hospital we stayed at the day after my niece was born and sent back for jaundice.  “…But I haven’t been there for a month.  I have been in Virginia, and North Carolina, then Massachusetts and upstate New York…it’s been wonderful!”

“Really?  That sounds great!”

“Yes, it’s been just a month of one-way tickets, I guess you’d say.”  I guess you would.  Here I was, sitting right next to this woman who was ending a journey I was about to begin.  I stared at her for a moment and the genuine peace she exuded became more clear.

“Wow, that’s what I’m about to do…” 

And I decided right then and there that these small moments only come to me when I’m open to them coming.  That the universe puts in front of me what I tell it I want.  That if I stopped looking at my phone every minute, checking updates on Instagram, looking at emails, taking pictures, and talking on the phone – I’d bump into, meet, and encounter just exactly what I need to. 

So here we go – the summer of one-way tickets – dedicated to being open to all and everything the universe brings my way.