Are You Sitting on Your Ticket?

From Robert Fulghum's It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It:

"There you were, Hong Kong airport, end of summer of 1984, tensely occupying a chair next to mine. Everything about you said, "Young American Traveler Going Home." You had by then exchanged jeans and T-shirt for sarong and sandals. Sensible short hair had given way to hair long and loose. The backpack beside you bore the scars and dirt of some hard traveling, and it bulged with mysterious souvenirs of seeing the world. Lucky kid, I thought.

When the tears began to drip from your chin, I imagined some lost love or the sorrow of giving up adventure for college classes. But when you began to sob, you drew me into your sadness. Guess you had been very alone and very brave for some time. A good cry was in order. And weep you did. All over me. A monsoon of grievous angst. My handkerchief and your handkerchief and most of a box of tissues and both your sleeves were needed to dry up the flood before you finally got it out.

Indeed, you were not quite ready to go home; you wanted to go further on. But you had run out of money and your friends had run out of money, and so here you were having spent two days of waiting in the airport standby with little to eat and too much pride to beg. And your plane was about to go. And you had lost your ticket. You cried all over me again. You had been sitting in this one spot for three hours, sinking into the cold sea of despair like some torpedoed freighter. At moments you thought you would sit there until you died.

After we dried you off, I and a nice older couple from Chicago, who were also swept away in the tide of your tears, offered to take you to lunch and to talk to the powers that be at the airlines about some remedy. You stood up to go with us, turned around to pick up your belongings. And SCREAMED. I thought you had been shot. But no ... it was your ticket! You found your ticket. You had been sitting on it... for three hours.

Like a sinner saved from the very jaws of hell, you laughed and cried and hugged us all and were suddenly gone. Off to catch a plane for home and what next. Leaving most of the passenger lounge deliriously limp from being a part of your drama.

I've told your story countless times. She was sitting on her own ticket, I conclude and the listeners always laugh in painful self-recognition. Often when I have been sitting on my own ticket in some way—sitting on whatever it is I have that will get me up and on to what comes next—I think of you and grin at both of us and get moving. So thanks. You have become, in a special way, my travel agent. May you find all your tickets and arrive wherever it is you want to go, now and always" (189-191).


I just love this story. My Human Development professor told it to my class during my sophomore year and it really struck a chord with me. As 2013 draws to a close, I think of all the times I've sat on my own ticket this year. Although it happened more than I care to admit, I am grateful that every time I was able to find that ticket, laugh and move on to a better destination.

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I hope anyone who reads this will take a lesson from it. The only thing that's stopping you is yourself. Don't sit on your ticket. As the new year begins, move forward in life with confidence and purpose. 

Bon voyage!