How to Miracle

My four year old nephew adores planes. 

He loves to talk about taking a plane. He loves asking about when he’s going on a plane next. He loves to ask if visitors came on a plane. He proudly announces to his parents often that his uncle, me, is probably sitting on a plane right now. 

It’s not just him that loves plans. I do too. 

While waiting to board a recent flight, I found myself staring out the window at the gate. The sun was shining brightly off the jumbo jet, that had a majestic presence despite resting on what looked like such delicate feet. 

I began to notice the airport ground crew, some in a rush, some not so much. There were people loading cargo bags, others driving trucks with what looked like food containers, and even more people that it wasn’t clear to me what they were doing. 

I glanced and saw the airline agents checking people in, one by one. My fellow passengers, all different ages, ethnicities, and stages of life. For just a moment, I imagined all of the different places they have all come from, and are all going to after we land. 

Then it hit me. The coordination required to make happen what I was about to experience was unreal. 

The pilots. The flight crew. The ground crew. The food. The cleaners. The airport control tower. The airline. The airport security. Border control. And so many other. Within a mere few hours, so many people had to be involved for this moment to happen. 

And it’s not just my sole experience of taking one flight. There are thousands of such flights, each with hundreds of people, across tens of thousands of airports, all being coordinated simultaneously with no one person or entity in charge. Every single day.

This is not even accounting for the engineering that has gone into figuring out how to lift a piece of metal, with hundreds of humans, into the sky and safely move it across an ocean to a different part of the world. And then put it back onto the ground. 

It felt like a miracle. 

It is a miracle when I take just a moment to think about it. The opportunity for something, anything, to go off plan is tremendous and yet, nine times out of ten, ninety percent of everything goes to plan. 

And when that one time out of ten something inconvenient happens, we more than often lose our patience or peace, with little aknowledgement for what did go to plan. 

Now apply this to so many other experiences in our day-to-day lives. 

Taking a train or bus to work. How many people were involved in the engineering, the building of the stations, the management, cleanliness and safety of the entire process? And when the train takes an extra two minutes than anticipated to arrive, we feel a bout of disapproval and disappointment. 

Or take buying groceries at the supermarket. How annoyed do we get because the avocados for sale are not ripe enough, the tomatoes not soft enough, or the lineup to pay too long? Forgetting the fact that produce has been grown and transported over months from hundreds of locations around the world to give us the variety, selection and convenience we desire within ten minutes of our home. 

We are experiencing miracles day in and day out. And it completely changes my experience of them when I take just a moment to recognize reality for what it is. 

Yes, there are disappointments that naturally arise. It’s part of the human experience. But there can also be appreciation and gratitude for what we get to experience as humans. 

It is absolutely incredible. It fills my heart with gratitude and my mind with awe. 

Miracles need not be the rare, once-in-a-lifetime moments or acts reserved for a divine life force. The best miracles are the ones I experience every single day, when I truly open my eyes and see. I suspect that’s something my nephew knows how to do naturally and why he loves planes so much.

And that is how I learned to Miracle.