Here All Along

Listen to the audio: https://venture-within.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Here-All-Along.m4a

3 weeks ago

“We have no more hope”, she said.

I hovered in the back galley, the metal drawers and cabinets slamming slightly, but not alarmingly, in the turbulence 35,000 feet above the Earth.

The seatbelt sign was unlit, and after 4 or 5 hours into a 12-hour flight, I was cramped from sitting too long. The open space in the back of the plane and chatting with the flight attendants with close proximity to free wine and snacks was more alluring than the in-flight movie selection.

On these cross-Atlantic flights, which I used to do more often, and often cross-Pacific, chatting with the airline staff to while away the time and stretch came easily.

Her name was also Christy (Christine?) and we started musing about life in the UK, in the US, and in Central America, and the unlikely commonality of discovering we were both owners of tripawds — her, a cat, and me, a pup. The fact that we both had roots in LA and in London felt less significant after learning that she and I were both owners of lovely and unusual pets.

Whilst chatting, I learned that she used to own a ballet studio as an American living in London. This had been her full-time dream-turned-reality: to own a ballet…