The gift

I’m never flying spirit again, I thought, but that was bullshit. They were cheap and I was broke but somehow I always wanted more, more books, more places, more experiences, not more money.

There was a blonde kid sitting across the aisle from me with a shining black leg brace and beautiful olive green Nike shoes. He was clean, rich clean, and you could tell he came from money. His mother took out a disinfectant wipe and cleaned the trays in front of them. She had hair as gold as the kid’s and sat next to the father who was wearing a sports jacket and Prada glasses. They were money.

The kid confessed some concerns and the mother tried to comfort him. “You have a gift” she said, “Everyone is always asking me where you’re going and I tell them I don’t know.” S**t, I bet even if he had no gift the amount of money they would donate or the education and extracurricular this kid had been thrown into would have granted him a spot in whatever f*****g ivy he wanted.

But the issue here was that I had been in his shoes all those years ago, not with the security of money or the privilege of a white skin but with the belief that I had a gift. I had been enlightened by the bright lights of Boston, enchanted by the pace of the runners by the Charles, and all the possibilities of a bright new sky. Here I was six years later, looking into the past and wondering what the hell I had done with such a gift.

On 21D sat a young man with his whole life ahead of him, able to pursue any life he wanted. Next to me sat a Hispanic mother and her young son, behind the blonde kid, a blonde girl, oblivious to the struggles of life. Behind me sat a young black man kicking the back of my seat. Here were at least a hundred lives, all together, stuck in the same space for two hours. All of us in different moment of our lives, coming from different places and going to different ones, all of us with different gifts.

I walked out of the Denver airport and into the lights. The sun was setting and there was a beautiful orange sky burning behind the mountains. There was nothing for me to do but appreciate the beauty of that mortal moment. I shed a tear as I imagined my mother putting her hand on my shoulder. I laughed and I walked away from the beauty of that moment. I was a rolling stone and the world was mine for the taking, such was my gift.