I did it on the back of a horse. And that’s saying something. For I have seldom been on the back of a horse. But, there I was on a family outing, nose to tail on a trail through some of the most beautiful mountains of Colorado. The vast sky, the mountains reaching beyond the imagination and I was there with the family riding horses.
It suddenly dawned on me that we would be flying out of Denver International Airport the next day. We were to fly on Southwest Airlines. For those who don’t know about flying on Southwest, you can check in online 24 hours prior to departure and when you do, you are assigned a section for boarding. The hope is to be in the A section so you can board and find an isle or window seat and not have to sit in the middle between strangers. We were not going to get signed in early enough to get good seats if we had to wait till be got back to the house.
Then Deb said, “You have an SWA app. You can check in now.” And sure enough, while riding on the back of a horse, I opened the app, looked at the clock on my phone and exactly 24 hours before our departure, I clicked “Check in” and we made it—into the A group!!
I remembered my friend who is in the tech business telling me some 15 years ago that the internet and the digital world was going to change everything. And he was right. We are all so instantly interconnected that it is sometimes overwhelming. We can keep up with each other, find long lost friends, order groceries while flying across the country.
And there are lots of opinions as to whether all this connecting is good. For indeed, people walk around texting and Skyping, lost in music fed directly into the head. We can find out about anything anyone has ever thought about and become consumed in a virtual world while missing the physical world around us.
I know that this digital world has a lot of good and a lot of bad in it. I know that we can argue how we are changing and whether it is healthy or not. But, that day, there on the back of a horse, enjoying the beauty of the season and the love of my family, when I was able to connect and get a seat just like that, I have to say, “It was pretty damn cool!!”