#111: Why I’m totally fine with my nonsensical habits and beliefs.
Just crazy enough to survive this crazy world.
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“Do you still use a paper boarding pass???”
I could hear Kendall’s raised eyebrow through the phone.
I was perched at a high table in the back corner of the United lounge at Heathrow, people watching like a zombie. I’d just had a living-my-best-life weekend in London, and was content but completely dazed from the whirlwind. Dinner with the powerhouse ladies from my British publisher. Waiting for Godot. Two museums and hours of conversation with British bestie Paul. Taking an absurd number of photos of Christmas lights.
Looking down, I slid the standard issue rectangular airline ticket underneath my iPad as if she could look over my shoulder and see it.
You know how it is when the alphas in your life come at you. You have to respond with strength. So I decided to lean in. Hard.
“YES I DO. Got something to say about it?”
“You’re a nerd,” she casually replied.
She’s right.
But while this is absolutely true, it isn’t the cause of my paper ticket preference.
Fraidy cat would be closer to the pin. Risk manager. Bad luck believer. Karma cop. Catastrophizer.
This paper preference is emblematic of my modus operandi: mitigate every possible cause of danger or bad luck.
A few examples of my wonky thinking:
If I don’t bring that thing, I’ll need it. Stuff it in!
If I do something I’m not supposed to, I’ll get caught. No rule breaking!
If I leave my phone in the car, it will get locked in. Then I’ll need to make an emergency call. Phone in pocket at all times!
If I talk smack about someone, they’ll find out. Lips zipped!
And if I rely on an electronic boarding pass, my phone battery will die….
But wait.
I never let my iPhone battery get below 57%. (Why 57% you ask? Because anything lower is too close to 50% and 50% is too close to dead!) I’m not like a teenager who tells their mom ‘my phone died’ when they don’t want to be found. I have to be able to be found. AT ALL TIMES. And I have to find the kids at all times, which requires a charged phone. (They are cool with sharing their location rather than me pestering them and asking where they are. I use that function like it’s going out of style.)
So I get a paper boarding pass in case my phone dies, but I never let my phone die… Ok, have I gone too far?
We all have quirks.
Some more damaging, self-sabotaging, and downright bizarre than others. But some are really not that big of a deal.
I come from a “Did I leave the oven on?”/ “Is the tailgate closed?”/ “Did I lock the front door?” -type family.
My beloved Grandma Tillie was famous for going back in the house and checking the hob. Even if she hadn’t been cooking that day. How did this impact her life? Not much really. It got her a few extra steps, and a few chuckles at herself. You could argue that it caused her anxiety, but the truth was, it’s how she managed her anxiety. She could have gone to years of therapy to unknot the superstition that she was going to burn the house down… maybe… if therapy had even been a thing yet. Instead, Tillie simply folded this second-guessing, double-checking proclivity into her daily routine. And then she got on with life.
We are all imperfect, fallible human beings. When we fight rather than accept this fact, our personality quirks turn into Achilles heels. By resisting them, we make them problems — we feel shame about them, then try to hide them, we get weird when others point them out, etc, etc, etc.
On the other end of the spectrum, befriending them has a pleasant, dare I say elegant effect. It defangs our idiosyncrasies, nullifying our desire to pummel ourselves about them.
And it allows us to focus on what’s actually important, while letting go of what really doesn’t matter.
I’m embracing my harmless flaws.
Not every peculiarity merits a manhunt and prison time.
I have bigger fish to fry in the messy human realm... My tendency to get affronted, to do everything as quickly as possible, to eat a whole sleeve of Oreos. Or two. These are quirks with impact, on me and others.
A paper boarding pass doesn’t come close.
So I’ll continue to go all the way up to the check-in desk and talk to a real person to print them (said in my incredulous daughter’s voice). I’ll use them as bookmarks, scratch pads, mementos of trips that leave me exhausted and elated in Heathrow airport.
We don’t know what the future holds, what really lives at the bottom of the ocean, or how planes actually stay in the air. Our quirks, superstitious rituals, nonsensical coping mechanisms help us feel some tiny wisp of control amidst the chaos of life. So what?
Being sane in an insane world sounds like no fun anyway.
Kooky and proud,
But that one time your phone does go all the way to zero - and the backup paper pass saves the day - is when our idiosyncratic behaviors will all make sense. 😂
Hilarious. Had no idea. Seems incompatible with your otherwise minimalist approach to stuff.