When you are all in it together, you don’t have any choice but to trust. On the cross country flight, you have to leave your bags in the overhead or under your seat – while you get up for just a moment to walk, stand and stretch or visit the rest room. You can’t possibly take everything with you. Nor can you “keep your bags within your personal possession and control” that is the mantra at the airport – the very same place you’ve only left just hours earlier…So there is this implied trust that no one will take, nor add anything to your luggage.
A level of trust rarely offered to complete strangers.
Somehow, the closeness and proximity of sharing 6 hours with people you have never met and will probably never see again is just part of the humanity that we should all be reminded of every once in a while.
No one is really any better than you – certainly that is the reality. We are all human beings, born here by some miracle and magic combination of __________ and __________ (insert your favorite words, mine are science and coincidence.)
What would have happened if this or that had happened before you were created? Someone else would be here instead of you and you wouldn’t even know it.
At which point, it would not even matter if someone pinched one of your credit cards, your cash or took a long look (and maybe a picture) of your confidential Power Point presentation meant to be seen only by your client and their Board of Directors.
Nope. This isn’t a spy meets spy movie where Tom Cruise is going to save Cameron Diaz from the evil government bad guys…even though we are flying over acres and acres of corn fields in the middle of the country. It is just a Wednesday in the end of the summer…and I have to assume that the implied trust between me and the strangers around me is mutual. I will leave their stuff alone – and they’ll do me the same courtesy, as only humans can offer.
~ Dawn aka Hat Girl