There is nothing inherently THPL about a flight delay. They take time from us, frustrate us because of our lack of control over the situation and they introduce uncertainty into a highly planned life system. Yes, yes, we can talk ourselves into the idea that the flight delay is ok, that we have more time to hang out, to read, to catch up on emails but, while possible to think this way, we would not have designed your THPL day to sit in an airport searching for a plug so that you could continue to read email —- thus we can boldly affirm that a flight delay is not a key THPL activity.

That stated, we can, take good from “bad”, and reflect on the situation so that we can Learn more about people, situations and how they develop and manifest themselves. Let’s take the flight delay example. The majority of our perception of the delay relates to the way the airline crew, from gate agent, to flight attendant, to pilot communicates to the passengers. More communication = less frustration. No communication is like throwing gasoline on fire – it just gets hotter and hotter, tempers flair and no good comes of it. Basic lesson; at no extra cost, and actually no extra time or effort you can do better. All you need is simple courtesy – by its act and nature you can bring up the level of the situation to the best it can be. Communication alone will not fix it – we rarely can – but it makes it tolerable and acceptable, which is a home run when your flight is late.

One last point, since we all have high standards as part of the THPL community – we need to recognize that sometimes the high standards are geared toward improving the qualitative results and the related sentiment – not the absolute quantitative measurements that we often associate with THPL.

Loving life while avoiding flight delays

Ciao

Joe