Circling in a Holding Pattern

 

By Michael Babcock

I’d landed in Kathmandu more than a dozen times before, but this was different.

We were circling in a holding pattern, gliding around the mountain ridge—that rim of a bowl that cradles the city deep in its base.

Holding patterns in Atlanta or Dallas are not uncommon; but this was Nepal. The majority of plane traffic carried either trekkers to the Himalayas or migrant workers to and from the Gulf States—a largely unknown exploitation of cheap human labor to the oil-rich kingdoms thousands of miles away.

As we circled the city, I tried to make out landmarks familiar to me at street level.

The Boudhanath Stupa was easy to identify as the sun glistened from the golden pinnacle that sat atop a bone-white base. I could even make out the Tibetan prayer flags, little splashes of color strung from the pinnacle.

My mind drifted back a few years. I was sitting in the covered courtyard of the stupa. It was the monsoon season, and the sky broke furiously with rain. As currents of water rolled through the courtyard, enormous rats emerged from the underground pipes while tourists scrambled for cover in the little shops that ringed the shrine. The downpour and the wonderful chaos that followed was not announced or explained.

It just happened.

I’ve never heard a booming voice from heaven. Stuff just happens, and we adjust. A voice over the intercom, however, would have been welcome. It never came; the pilot never explained the delay. And that surprised me.

In Atlanta I might be told the traffic was backed up and we were tenth in line for landing. In Dallas, it might be a summer thunderstorm moving across the airport. Having no information or reassuring voice to hang onto, my mind became a worry factory. I had one hour of dedicated time to spin narratives of destruction. The landing gear is stuck. That’s it! We’re flying around to burn off fuel as we prepare for our fiery crash landing.

And then we landed—uneventfully.

But as we deplaned, I saw the pilot on the tarmac. He was walking around the nosecone, touching it, examining it, and cocking his head. Something wasn’t right.

I’ll never know what that extra hour in the air was all about, but it made me think of how we live much of our lives in holding patterns steeped in uncertainty. The waiting might be imposed on us, such as the line stretching out the door at the DMV. Or the waiting may be on us—the result of our own indecision. Regardless, uncertainty is the common denominator.

Looked at another way, however, there’s no such thing as a holding pattern.

There’s only life unfolding moment by moment. What I’m so quick to call a delay, a waste of time, a postponement of my plans, is just another opportunity to be aware.

To see what the world looks like from a different perspective as I press my nose against the thick panes of an airplane window. To recall the rich choreography of suchness and suddenness that follows from the breaking of a storm. To pause, take it all in, and “see into the life of things,” as Wordsworth put it.

Perhaps we need more holding patterns.

Perhaps we merely need to redefine them, reset our expectations, and open our eyes to the world, unbound by our plans and schedules. The landing gear may or may not function as expected, but this moment is golden, like the pinnacle of the stupa.

And there are prayer flags everywhere—beautiful, colorful prayer flags—if we just notice them.

 

A longtime dharma practitioner, Michael Babcock has taught college English for over 25 years. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Germanic Philology. Michael is the author of The Night Attila Died (Berkley Books, 2005). You can contact Michael on Facebook.

 

 

 

Photo: Pixabay

Editor: Dana Gornall

 

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