It Is What It Is

I am excited to announce that last week, I was on a real vacation! What I mean by a real
vacation is this – this particular trip had nothing to do with my profession nor was it
tacked on to a work-related trip, I did not take work-related projects to complete rather a
silly romance novel I found for $5.00 at the local bookstore, and best of all I had zero
access to the internet. There was plenty of food and merriment, relaxation pools,
entertainment, and quality time with family, so I was well taken care of.

This trip however, did come with a few moments of shifting carefully-created plans and creating
new ones in the span of 30-minutes. You see, I was on a cruise originally headed into
what would be a category 4 storm named Beryl. The ports of call changed in a moment
to places I have been before. To top it off, it seemed that Beryl followed the cruise
itinerary only a few days behind us so, what was once a pleasant beach and Myan Ruin
location quickly became a pile of dismantled chairs and fruit stands. To those of us on
the ship, this was a minor inconvenience in relation to the devastation felt by the people
in Beryl’s wake.

On the return flight, we had another minor inconvenience. Our connecting flight was
delayed by approximately 5-hours due to yet another storm, rerouting of planes, a fuel
reload, and crew changes. This put us home and in our own beds back from the
pleasant original time of 6:00pm to 12:30am. Again, a minor inconvenience in relation to
the airport staff and airline reorganizational stress that was happening behind the
scenes as we lounged in our chairs drinking soda and eating chips.

Throughout the trip – including the last handful of hours waiting patiently in the airport
for our flight along with 160 other Albuquerque-bound travelers – I took note of how
people respond to moments of stress and change. Some, not so well as displayed by
how they chose to speak to their traveling companions and airline staff, and others
seemed to go with the bumps with ease as displayed by smiling faces and offers to
assist parents with overly tired and hungry children. Now, If I am being honest with
myself and all of you, I would say I am somewhere in the middle regarding my stress
response and I will leave it at that!

In both the cruise change of itinerary announcement and the airport situation, I heard
possibly the most dismissive comment known to the English language uttered again and
again – “It is what it is.” This phrase, to me, is not helpful and does not share empathy
to those whom change is difficult for. I remember my mother once commenting
sarcastically on this phrase saying, “It is what it is – It ain’t what it ain’t!”
Travel can be stressful event to the most experienced travelers among us. Life can be
stressful even to the most experienced among us. In this vein, I believe language to be
important. I believe self-awareness and the understanding that we don’t understand
what others are experiencing is important. In life’s most stressful moments, let us watch
our language, let us embody self-awareness, and let us not be dismissive to ourselves
or to others.