At the boarding gate. Sublime. Awaiting a flight somewhere new, someplace different yet familiar, I want to freeze time. I want to be in the moment for as long as possible. I want to savour the mystery, to visualize my highest dream of the adventure to come. Sublime.

Time does fly and I believe that any given moment in life is to be savoured. Savoured by slowing down moment by moment. Being fully present, conscious, and alert. Present to the potential exhilarating high points and palpable low points, in the moment.

I’ve learned that these moments are a spectrum composed of joys and sorrows, successes and failures, hopes and fears. This full range of experiences over time shape and define our identity.

Right now, I am identifying with being a storyteller. Perhaps a mystery storyteller. You have yet to know what I am going to be talking about, what story will I tell, you wonder? Savour this moment, the anticipation of what’s to come. Stay with me.

Now imagine that you are at a Boarding Gate. The area where we wait before boarding a flight, train, bus. I savour the moments at the boarding gate, the place where I dream, hold in my heart great hopes, perhaps even grieve my worst fears, just before I venture to another place.

I crave this moment just before I venture on a journey to a known or unknown place. Literally and metaphorically. The actual boarding gate experience is one of my favourite times. I truly do savour the moments spent at the boarding gate.

I am consciously aware of being present to all the sensations around me. I am excited. I feel my heart beating rhythmically in tune with the sounds of chatter around me. I notice a child turning his face upward to his mother, pleading to go to the gift shop to get candy or a cool toy. I hear broadcasts of flight arrivals, departures. I breath it all in. I feel a paradoxical desire to stay and dream, and to go and begin my journey. It is a journey indeed.

In my experience, once I board, I am on a journey of change that impacts my identity in paradoxical ways. I am subtly and profoundly changed. Once on the flight and after I arrive, time literally flies. I sadly realize that I lose that focus on the present moment. Even with repeated practice, I am vulnerable to the sweep of the tide, the ‘doing’ that follows landing. In this moment, I crave the ‘doing’ and the ‘being’ in the journey ahead.

I am at a virtual boarding gate right now. It’s the boarding gate of a shifting identity. Years in the making and somehow familiar. It is as though I am returning home to a place, a me, I’ve always been. There is a voice inside me that is mine and yet not mine. It is channeling through me.

I close my eyes and remind myself: “Be present. Breathe slowly. Notice. Look, see. Listen, and hear. Touch, feel. Smell, sense. Taste, savour. Breathe slowly.”

I have yet to begin. I savour the moment. I repeat the mantra: “Be present. Breathe slowly, Notice…”

I awaken to the calls to board. It’s time to go. I resist. I am standing at the edge of change. I repeat my mantra. I breathe in.

Ok. I’m ready. I cross the edge. I board the flight to an expanded identity, the part of me that was born with me. It’s the identity that shows up when I write, speak publicly, coach, facilitate and create.

In spiritual teachings and practices we are taught that this voice is: “In me. As me. Through me.” It’s a voice that utters with deep self-assurance the knowledge, learning and wisdom that is greater than me. It’s the voice of relationship, it is the voice of the system of which I am on the journey to impact with questions, curiousities and observations and reflections.

As a professional coach, facilitator and trainer, having real and courageous conversations is my true calling. And at times it is a mission. In real conversation, we challenge complicity and complacency. It’s not easy and it is bold. It’s fulfilling and it takes courage.

I am most at peace in this identity that is me, as me, through me. In this moment of expressing this shift in my identity, I feel challenged and yet at home with the feeling. The challenge melts away with the feeling of focus, being alert, clear and present.

Here, I am present to all that is around and in me, all the signals that I breathe in and out, deeply. I see limitless possibilities in the work that I do to listen and challenge others to shift perspective, to challenge the status quo of self and the system; to be at the boarding gate and prepare for the next journey. I hear words of both fear and inspiration. We are at peace with the conversation, in acceptance even when not in agreement.

I feel influential. I smell genius. I taste joy. I am simultaneously at the boarding gate, on an adventure and at home. At the Boarding Gate. Sublime.

• Change
• Courage

by Lucy Shenouda