First-class selflessness: Pass it on
Randy Cole of Libby, Mont., works as a security officer on the Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska. He flies between home and work every two weeks. Over the Christmas holidays, he had an experience while traveling through Spokane that reminds us, as this new year dawns today, that we control only two things: the present moment, and the way we treat one another in that moment.
As if we needed a reminder. Video footage from the tsunamis shows that no matter how solidly we feel connected to our land and our place in the universe, it can all disconnect in less time than it takes God to blink an eye.
Cole’s story actually begins in August 2004 when he met Ben Stein during a flight from Alaska to the Northwest. Stein, a Beverly Hills actor, pundit and former presidential speechwriter, has a summer home in North Idaho. Cole was so impressed with Stein that he later looked up his Web site and read Stein’s thoughts on patriotism and the need to show unconditional support for our troops.
Four months later, the night before he would journey home for the holidays, Cole, 49, had this dream: He was standing in a line at an airport. A young soldier wearing fatigues also waited. The soldier had just returned from Iraq. Cole said: “I boarded before the soldier and I found myself asking, ‘What would Ben do?’ I took my seat in the first row (of first class) and as the soldier stepped through the door of the aircraft, I told him that he would take my seat and I would take his. The dream ended there and when I woke, I remember thinking, ‘What the hell was that all about?’ Although just a dream, it made me feel good.”
The next day, after flying from Anchorage to Seattle, Cole was waiting in line for his Alaska Airlines flight to Spokane. He spotted a soldier chatting with those around him. The soldier wore fatigues.
“The patch on his left shoulder told me that he was a member of a mechanized infantry unit. He said that he had just flown back from Iraq and would not be returning. He explained that he was a gunner on a Humvee and all of us were thinking how it must feel to return from battle in one piece.”
Then, those waiting in line noticed that another young man – “who wore the dark, long-belted coat and spit-shined shoes of someone fresh out of basic” – introduced himself to the returning soldier. The younger soldier told the older soldier that he would be shipped out after Christmas
Cole boarded his flight. Because he travels so much, he’s often upgraded to first class. He settled into his seat – 1D – and when the GI in fatigues boarded, of course Cole gave the soldier his seat in first class, just as the dream had predicted.
Then the fresh-out-of-basic-training soldier made his way into the plane. The man seated in 1C saw him and stood up. He gave his first-class seat to the second soldier and joined Cole in coach class.
The plane landed in Spokane. The two GIs thanked the men who gave them the comfortable first-class seats. Still high from the experience, Cole e-mailed Stein and told him about the dream and the actual events that followed. Stein said he would have done exactly the same thing. It’s a short flight, true, from Spokane to Seattle but the symbolism was worth 10,000 spiritual miles.
Cole is urging others to perform small acts of kindness toward military folks they meet randomly – in places such as airports and restaurants – so that this kindness will become second nature.
“Take a moment and walk up to the next person you see in uniform and shake their hand and say thanks,” Cole said. “Buy him, or her, a cup of coffee or pay for their lunch.”
As we welcome in 2005 today, it feels as if the center cannot hold. We have a moving Earth, an angry ocean, a brutal war. We are frail humans, no matter how much physical and emotional armor we wrap ourselves in. Yet we possess the moment we live in now. And the choice to extend a hand out from this moment to shape the future of the stranger nearby.