Terminal Patience

Indianapolis needs its own airline. Certainly, the new airport is beautiful. It makes the travel experience better in almost every way. But could we have spent the billion or so dollars needed to construct the new edifice to buy our own carrier replete with an abundance of direct flights? On a day when I didn’t need to leave the house before 4:30 AM to make an astonishingly early first leg of a flight to Boston, I might be more reasonable in my assessment of our local travel options. Certainly, those who are dedicated to such matters work hard to give us as much choice as possible and make Indy an attractive alternative to airlines both major and minor. Yet sitting in a filthy and over-used hub waiting for yet again another connection, one is justified in expressing frustration. With each point on the map, the chance of lost luggage, missed connection and weather delay increases. But, we can take stock that our mileage award miles rack-up faster when our flight home from DC stops off in Cleveland. 

There’s Something About Scary

Halloween is rapidly approaching and with it comes the corresponding host of traditions. Some of us will festoon the house – top to bottom with all matter of frightening (and fun) paraphernalia designed to usher in the coming winter. Others, no doubt, will resist the event all together decrying the ritual, at best, as a fiction invented by enterprising greeting card manufacturers (like so many modern American holidays) or, at worst, a throwback to paganism unworthy of national celebration. But many more will simply carve a pumpkin, help the kids dress as their favorite Disney princess or mutant ninja turtle, and pass out some candy picked up earlier that day at a convenience store on the way home from work.

Was Marley Right?

Delusions of altruism aside, most humans are fundamentally self-interested. That doesn’t mean that we are all some form of Dickensonian Scrooge awaiting a visit from the three apparitions to put us on the path to righteousness. Instead, the statement simply acknowledges that we mostly tend to do what makes us feel good. Some of us like to run companies. Some of us like to run governments. Some of us like to teach. Others of us like to create. Whatever the proclivity, our natures will find a way to lead us there. Clearly, one’s motivation is rarely neatly segregated – it would be most accurate to understand that there are a plethora of reasons instigating our actions all-the-while recognizing that overarching themes drive us to make important life choices.