It started with not getting a window seat when I checked in for my flight today.
I ended up in 14C — an aisle. Not ideal, but not terrible. Until my seatmate closed the window so she could watch a show on her device. Others followed. And so, this mid-afternoon flight out of Seattle, on an unusually clear and sunny winter day, was pulled into a kind of collective dusk.
Dark. Stuffy. Tight.
As one of the last to board, I’d noticed something earlier: row 12 had an empty side. After takeoff, with the refreshment cart inching slowly up the aisle, I realized that the window there was still open — casting what felt like the only warm patch of light in the entire cabin.
Row 12 was still empty. I looked around. I looked at row 12. I looked at the cart.
And then came the chorus:
You can’t do that. You might get in trouble. Why isn’t anyone else doing it? What if someone sees you? You should ask first. What if they say no? It just isn’t done! Stay put.
And then, from somewhere deeper — and much quieter — came a small question:
Why not?
I had seconds before the refreshment cart would block the path.
Go! — said that little voice
I stood up, grabbed my coffee and backpack, and slipped into row 12 just in time.
Light. Space. I could breathe again.
A trivial move on the surface. Just a seat change. And yet, in that space, I found myself sitting with the hesitation.
What was I actually afraid of? It wasn’t the move itself. It was the transition — the brief time between rows 14 and 12.
The moment without a seat… without ground… without the social cover of “belonging.” The moment where things could go “wrong.” Being called out. Being exposed. Being mortally embarrassed!
None of those things happened. The likelihood was always low. The benefit was obvious.
And still, the fear was strong.
Transitions have that effect on us.
They are the liminal spaces we avoid, even when the movement is voluntary, and the destination is clearly better. They disrupt our sense of identity for a moment. They ask us to be visible. They remind us that nothing stays fixed.
Some transitions come every few years. Others arrive with the force of a lifequake, every decade or so. Some are chosen. Others come uninvited. Some are personal. Others are collective.
Yet the human response is often the same. Hesitation. Shame. Resistance. Worry about exposure and societal judgment. A fear of not belonging. A hope that things might remain as they are, even when we know they will not.
What if we softened around transitions?
What if we took them as natural as the shift between day and night, or the turning of seasons?
What if we prepared where we could, and adapted when we couldn’t?
What if the fear isn’t a sign to freeze, but a sign we’re between chairs for a moment… on our way to more light, more air, more room to breathe?
Here are the questions that stayed with me — and that you might consider asking yourself:
- What transition am I holding back from because of the brief, uncertain walk between where I am and where I want to be?
- What might this transition make possible if I don’t expend all my energy resisting it?
- What might open for me if I went for it?
Here is what opened up for me: This gorgeous sunset over the Rockies, courtesy of the little voice that said Go!
Savoring the view from row 12.
