On flying standby

I am flying standby this morning because I’m on my way home and I don’t want to spend the entire day in the airport.  I have to cross the entire country from north to south, and I have to make two connections if I get on this flight.  It’s all very uncertain, but kind of exciting.  Will the wheels of good fortune turn my way and let me on this flight, or will the Fates keep me here until 3:30 when my regularly scheduled flight will leave?  The Spinners are working overtime today, and I am completely at the mercy of Fortune.  How wonderfully medieval.  To not know the outcome, to gamble as it were, to trust an outcome to the serendipitous nature of a complex and chaotic world.  Will I get on the flight because someone cancels their trip, or decides to fly later today?  Flying standby is about knowing nothing, controlling nothing, waiting will everyone else boards the plane, waiting for the gate attendant to give me a new boarding pass with a seat number.  There is something deliciously out of control about the whole situation.  We live in a world in which we think we can control everything, but that, of course, is an illusion.  Boarding passes with seat numbers are an illusion of control.  In all honesty, most of life is about careening out of control around blind corners down dark alleys and into the abyss of life.  You cannot avoid life no matter how hard you try.  The best laid plans of mice and men too often come to naught, and most discourse is the sound and the fury with no meaning.  Barraged by television, by the internet, by billboards and announcements of all kinds, the Fates set us to dance in a never ending, whirling maelstrom of input that drives us mad with desire for things, for people, for money, for control.  In the end, we are all flying standby whether we like it or not.  I am going to finish this now so that I keep you in suspence.  I still don’t know if I am leaving in an hour or not, and it’s a wonderful feeling.