lost luggage, lost years, found treasures - a long post

I spent most of the weekend waiting, and worrying about Larry's lost luggage. Only because he had to be back on a plane to Dallas Sunday afternoon, and we needed to do his laundry. The airline wouldn't deliver to our town, so we spent most of the day playing phone tag with the airline and the courier service trying to figure out when it might arrive at my parents home, a few towns over, and within their delivery zone.
I have to say, it was lesson in staying calm, present and human. You want to scream, but you know the voice on the other end of the phone has people getting nasty with them all day long. What's the point? The luggage doesn't get found any faster. And I am holding in my heart, an idea that was offered at the recent Yom Kippur retreat I attended at New York Insight Meditation: "do you want to be the kind of person who makes people anxious, angry, upset, or calm, peaceful and free from suffering?"
I want to be the kind of person who puts others at ease, including myself. So every time I found my stomach in knots and my voice just about to raise, I relaxed a bit. And someday, with enough practice, perhaps I'll skip the knot wrenching stage altogether. Even in airports. Even with lost luggage.
But it's my nature to get nervous, excited, a little on edge with just the slightest provocation, which is why I meditate, chant, knit, study karate and and do everything I possibly can to act "as if" I were more peaceful at heart.
Nobody wants lost luggage, but long lost friends are another story. A room mate from college found me on Facebook a month or so ago. I ran into two sisters from high school the other day while walking through the West Village, and just last week, my college boyfriend dropped me an email and we caught up quickly by phone.
I took a look through the college yearbook only to discover that I remembered almost no one. But what's struck me most is a sweet, sad sensation that is so tender and touching, I almost hate to let it go. I walked around for a day with tears in my eyes, and while indulging in a little thrift store therapy, had to buy myself a stuffed animal in addition to the usual armload of clothes.
It's kind of crazy: life changes us completely and yet it doesn't change us at all.
And that's the found treasure.
May your day be filled with the Magic Medicine of the peace of mind and happy heart of the child you once were and will always be.

There's a really entertaining digression on lost time on TED. Click on the John Hodgman image/link.