In Iowa: Living in the moment can be a bumpy ride

There is nothing to make one question the adage saying the journey is more important than the destination than sitting on an airplane as the pilot announces takeoff has been delayed because the lavatory could overflow.

That was me at about noon Monday, the time I was supposed to be landing in California on a visit to my sister. But traveling in Iowa in the winter comes with no guarantees, and as ice bore down on the state, I watched my daybreak flight be canceled outright, only to arrive at The Eastern Iowa Airport for a later flight and learn no planes had been able to leave yet that day.

After we finally boarded, we sat on the runway for almost two hours, bookended by the pilot's dire announcements. Long before the worry about the toilets, we were told so many planes were covered with so much ice they had run out of de-icing agent, and the truck assigned to our plane had to refill before we could be doused in the unnaturally orange fluid that would thaw our airplane.

My initial positivity - three cheers for making the drive to the airport without sliding off the road! - had trouble keeping up that morning, and steadily waned throughout a day of delays and layovers that culminated with my sister locking her keys in her car and thus being late to pick me up at the California airport.

When I finally arrived at her apartment at nearly midnight, my relief (and exhaustion) were palpable. It was the kind of day that makes you question why you ever bother leaving your front door.

But as I wrote this the next morning, the sun shining, sitting on an outdoor patio despite the fact it is January, the smell of eucalyptus in the air and a view of mountains in the distance, the chill of the ice and the ache that comes from hours folded into too-small airplane seats were already fading, and I found myself wondering how soon I could plan another visit.

I've been very blessed to have been able to travel throughout my life, and as a result, I've been on a lot of awful journeys, including a trip in southern Africa where the bus I was on caught fire. Yet traveling has always proved worth it in the end, when I've gotten to my destination, tasted the food, dipped my feet in the ocean, embraced the person I was visiting. But the journey - it can be rough.

It's something I'm going to try to keep in mind in other aspects of life. I've seen a lot of articles lately about mindfulness and how living 'in the moment” could help us have better lives. But not all moments are so great.

Traveling is a fairly low-key example of this - I'm lucky to be able to get on a plane at all, so I really don't want to compare it with actual suffering. And I acknowledge that sometimes a clear, positive destination is hard to see a path to. Sometimes, living in the 'now” might be vital.

But sometimes you just need to keep your eyes on the goal, on the destination, on each step that will bring you closer to where you want to be. And that will make the journey more possible.