The Unconcerned Traveler

There were two men sitting on a plane in the coach section. One of the men simply sat in his seat enjoying the ride. From time to time he would listen to updates of the estimated time of arrival. Once or twice this man even looked at his ticket to make sure he was on time and on the right flight.

The other man kept looking around and pushing the button to get a flight attendant. After pushing the button a few times he had a pillow, a blanket, two bags of chips, and a can of soda. He even stuffed the plane magazines into his carry-on. Eventually he got up, trying to look as un-suspicious as possible, and walked to first-class and sat down in an empty seat.

The first man was so surprised at this behavior he could hardly believe it. He went over to the other man’s seat and noticed that all of the magazines were gone and there were crumbs everywhere. He looked in the magazine rack and saw that the man had left his ticket in it. He grabbed it and walked it up to the fellow in first class.  As he walked through the plane and looked at the ticket, he noticed that the man was not even on the right flight! He handed the tickets to him and said, “did you know you are on the wrong plane?”

The man just smirked while taking his ticket and said, “I guess you didn’t get much of a snack huh? Maybe the flight attendant doesn’t like you. Here I have some chips left in this bag. But look don’t bother me about where we are going, I’m just on for the ride man!”

The first man went back to his seat shaking his head. He thought to himself, “how could someone be so careless about where they are going?”

But aren’t we guilty of the same type of behavior? Our life is a journey to an eternal spiritual destination. How then can we act like the unconcerned traveler and seek only to have a first class ride?

It is easy to slip into the type of behaviour exhibited by the second traveler; to sit back and enjoy the journey of life seeking to get all that we can for the moment but with no concern for the destination of our souls.

One of our biggest temptations is to think that life is so long that we don’t have to think about our final destination. But consider, your life is but a vapor. It would be imprudent to set your hopes on this life alone.