The Crying Baby

"The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last year."

John Foster Dulles

There may be many things we want to alter in our lives.  But unless we stop talking and start doing something, those changes won't happen.  We can start by setting a small, easily attainable goal.

"My philosophy of life is No Pain, No Pain."

George Carlin

Resistance to pain = Suffering

Me.  I said that.  Everyone said that, maybe, could be!  It's talking to me, that pain.  It's sending me a message.  It's keeping me safe from physical and emotional danger so why do I spend so much time trying to get rid of it?  Today I try to look right at the pain, to pay attention to the pain, to figure out whether it's the good pain, trying to keep me safe, or the bad pain, the useless pain I hallucinate up in my mind worrying about non-events?

When I first started traveling on long overnight flights of many hours I would occasionally be seated near the dreaded Crying Baby.  The best antidote to a long flight on a cramped airplane is to sleep as much of it away as possible.  A Crying Baby doesn't make the task of falling asleep while seated upright on a jostling aircraft any easier.  Initially, I thought that the babies were doing it just to fuck with me.  Then I thought the airlines were scrutinizing the seating chart so that they could put as many babies in my section as possible, assuming that at least one of the babies might morph into the dreaded Crying Baby.  Then I read at one point that the human body is more programmed to notice a change in incoming stimuli than to notice the stimuli itself.  If I try to ignore the Crying Baby I am hyper-aware of any fluctuations in the volume, tone, and timbre of the wailing but if I just relax and pay attention to the howling my brain gets bored and begins to start to ignore it.  It doesn't ignore it completely - it's a Squalling Baby! - but it removes most of the anger and frustration I feel which is really what is keeping me awake.

Honestly, I'm more irritated by the two boring people sitting behind me who spend half the flight droning on and on about absolutely nothing.  The Crying Baby, at least, might be responding to the pain in the inner ear that can occur with the change in cabin pressure as the plane ascends and descends.  The baby has a reason to cry while the two adults talking loudly about absolutely nothing in a cabin full of people who are trying to sleep?

They're going to hell.