I spent thirty-seven years in the air.
Every year I got better at the job.
Calmer in turbulence.
Quicker on my feet.
Better at making a stranger feel safe at thirty-five thousand feet.
I was good at it. Really good.
Then I raised four kids into grown adults who don't need me to check their homework anymore.
Another thing I did well.
Another “game” I won.
I got to the end of all of it this year and asked myself a question I never once thought to ask in the middle of playing.
Whose game was that?
Nobody handed me a rulebook at twenty-five.
They just handed me the game already in progress.
Do this well.
Show up for that.
Be excellent.
Be steady.
Be needed.
I picked it up and played it like my life depended on it, because some part of me believed it did.
Nobody told me the rules were written by somebody else.
I found that out at the end, standing in a very quiet house, wondering who I even am now that the scoreboard stopped updating.
Here's what I know now that I wish I'd known at thirty-five.
You can win every single game you're handed and still feel like you lost, if it was never your game to begin with.
The opponent was never the turbulence, or the kids growing up, or getting older.
The opponent was the version of me that never once asked what I actually wanted, because she was too busy being good at what everyone else wanted.
I'm still playing.
I've just picked a different game.
If you're standing where I was standing, in the quiet after everyone stopped needing you for the thing you were so good at, I have one question for you to sit with.
Not an assignment. Just a question.
If nobody was grading you anymore, what game would you actually choose to play?
