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While Southwest Airlines was canceling flights
Sometimes I wonder if our concerns are truly as important as we think.
We exited the chicken fast food joint on a busy road in a Philippine town. Going over to the curb to wait for our hired van driver, I idly mused about the chaotic scene surrounding us.
Vehicles of all sizes and makes, jockeying for position in the clogged lanes. Rain-stained and smog-gray buildings. Not enough parking at the strip mall where we were at.
A high school friend told me traffic in the Philippines is so bad, you just learn to be resigned to it.
I stood there outside the chicken joint thinking how lucky I was I got a choice to come to America as a teen.
And that my kids were born there.
As I thought these very first world, almost clinical thoughts, my oldest daughter went over to a woman holding a sleeping toddler in her arms.
The woman was standing by a group of enterprising locals who appeared to eke out a meager hustle covering motorcycle seats with cardboard to keep them from getting too hot and charging cyclists for it.
My daughter held up her son’s too-tight sandals they no longer have him wear and gave them to the woman.