A change of plans

Latvian coast of the Baltic Sea

Currently: at a cafe at the Lisbon Airport. Where I am supposed to be: exactly right here.

I thought I would be waking up this morning in Porto, Portugal. It was going to be a quick trip, to take in the main sights and have a meal before heading to Lisbon the next day. These days I'm focusing on staying in the present, so I didn't have many/any expectations nor much planned. Which is maybe why when the pilot of our plane, an hour before landing, at one in the morning, announced that in fact we were headed towards Lisbon, I wasn't too upset. 

This reaction is uncharacteristically calm of me, of old me that is. New me realized that for some reason, which will remain unexplained, I was meant to be stuck on the plane, then in the airport, and then in Lisbon this morning.

When traveling, it can be tempting to plan every moment, to want to soak up all of the experience that you can. But things happen! Flights are delayed, museums are closed, it rains when you are supposed to go to the beach. While it's good to have a plan, it's important to make it flexible with plenty of options, and even more importantly, to have an adaptable mindset. While I heard people around me (and also me) sighing and complaining, thankfully no one on the plane was super agitated, including the many children. We were all exhausted, inconvenienced, and confused about what to do. But we held it together. 200 people trying to get information in multiple languages at 4 in the morning should have been chaos. Maybe we were all just too tired to fight. 

I'm already looking forward to exploring Lisbon and its surroundings. And this experience has been a micro-example of a mindset that I have recently embraced, or at least have been trying to: that even when we don't understand the why of something, we can still appreciate it for what it is. This is where I am today, now, in this moment. And I'm going to make the most of it.

love,

greer