I have a confession: I am not always able to follow my own travel advice to choose happiness. Inconsiderate fellow travelers are my Achilles heel, and, even though I wish desperately that I could tune them out with a serene mantra (like “peace begins with me” from Gabrielle Bernstein’s Miracles Now: 108 Life-Changing Tools for Less Stress, More Flow, and Finding Your True Purpose), I often fail.
My best example is one of my worst inconsiderate passenger stories. Years ago, when I was working as a consultant, I was seated on a plane in front of a kid who was being really rambunctious. Kids will be kids, but this kid kicked my seat and barked like a (loud) dog for upwards of fifteen minutes, all while his mother laughed and encouraged him. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned around and, as politely as possible, asked the mother if she could please ask him to turn the volume down. While she gave me an extremely dirty look, the kid paused his barking to ask, “What did she say, Mommy?” She turned to her son and said, “Nothing, it was just some lady being a bitch.” I very nearly lost my mind, only retaining some semblance of cool because another passenger stepped in to back me up.
I am certain that everyone who travels even a minimal amount has at least one similar story, be it a loud kid, someone who played games on their phone with the volume up (is there a more annoying sound than Candy Crush?), or an overly chatty seat mate, like the gentleman who once spent the entire flight from DRW to ORD trying to convert me to his particular brand of fundamentalist Christianity. Usually these inconsiderate fellow passengers are just one more stressor on a travel day, and therefore choosing to be happy (sadly) does not always work in the face of these irritants.
But do you know what does work? Noise-cancelling headphones. My mother gave me a pair for Christmas last year, and they have revolutionized my traveling experience.
Take, for example, the twenty-four hour train journey I took from Illinois to New Mexico. I can sleep anywhere (notably, I recently came across a photo of myself asleep on a rocky ferry in Laos), so spending the night upright in coach seats didn’t pose much of a problem for me. The three young girls in the row in front of me, however, were having a harder go of it. They were as restless and whiny as you might expect children to be on an overnight train trip — something for which I cannot blame them — and, if I had not had my headphones, I would have been up all night with them. Instead, I just turned on my headphones and tuned out the children. No barely contained frustration required.
Of course, I believe there are benefits to counseling yourself through difficult travel situations rather than just converting them to white noise. But when mantras don’t work, noise-cancelling headphones are the way to go.
Do you use noise-cancelling headphones when you travel?
Happy adventuring,
Katie.
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Image credit: Screaming kid by Mindaugas Danys; other author’s own.