Don’t mess with Texas
“Don’t mess with Texas”, that is the first thing I’ve learn before visiting Houston. But like what Chris Brogan said “ welcome to day one, you are the superhero you’ve been waiting for.” What I did not expect is to learn and say, “Don’t mess with me”.
As a cabin crew, my sole responsibility is to ensure the service and safety of the passengers onboard. But what most people perceive me to be is a high-end waiter catering to demands from thirty-five thousand feet. Most importantly, what they did not realize, including my fellow crew, is the importance of embodying bravery at any given time and moment of flying.
So why did I choose Texas, particularly Houston as the place that inspires me to be brave and save the day? Throughout my gap year of flying, Houston was my first ultra long haul destination, with a flying duration of sixteen hours. More importantly, the one and only Houston flight that I’ve done in my flying career is the most memorable among all my other flights.
On my first Houston flight, I encountered an old Arabic man crying loudly on his seat prior to disembarkation. I wasn’t able to understand him due to language barriers, but from the translation made by the passenger sitting beside him. I’ve come to realize that his daughter had just lost her battle to cancer and is now lying inside the coffin within our cargo. The old Arabic man was feeling so distressed, he wanted to go straight to the cargo and see his daughter. Although I was feeling very sympathetic for his great loss, I had to remain firm to the distressed passenger and warned him that if he continues to display such hysterical behavior, we will have to offload him from the flight. As much as I hate to give such warning during moments of one’s depression, I know I have to because I need to know whether the passenger is mentally fit to endure sixteen hours of flying. More importantly, my judgment will contribute to the captain’s decision to have him as a passenger and whether he will be a form of distress for the entire flight. People always say ‘with great power comes great responsibility’, but from the experience of my Houston flight. I truly believe that great bravery comes with greater responsibility because true bravery is not just about being proactive. True bravery also involves empathy so that our proactive decisions will lead us to see the bigger picture for every situation, and guide us to follow the path for a greater cause.
This Houston flights taught me a very important lesson about the act of bravery, it taught me how to harness the equilibrium between kindness and wisdom. Without kindness, we will not be able to put ourselves in another’s shoe and thus, the motivation to be brave will not be genuine. However, kindness without wisdom will potentially lead us to have the worst outcome out of the best intention. Therefore in order to achieve a powerful balance between the two, we need pure bravery as a bond so that we can learn how to make the most pragmatic decisions during the worst situations. Most importantly, the accurate sense of bravery will lead us to achieve a strong sense of self-regulation so that we will avoid reckless decisions through the deep consideration of the world we belong to.
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