In bloom

I felt super isolated and vulnerable yesterday, walking into and through a wall of cops at the airport. In moments of confrontation, for me and probably for others, there's no thinking through the situation calmly. The body knows when it's under threat and orients along long-used neural pathways that have served us humans for generations: fight, flight, freeze, fawn. Subconscious patterning and survival skills inform behaviors. Ask any good therapist, a huge percentage of our reactions and responses in the world aren't even conscious. We're quite literally not aware of what we do most of the time.

When I de-planed at Schiphol, there was a wall of cops waiting at the gate obstructing passenger movement. No one was getting into that airport yesterday without a passport check. Right at the gate, before we were anywhere near security and its new Schengen Entry and Exit System (EES).  These were Dutch cops, not the American kind— most of them were quite fit, tall: six feet high and rising. This wasn't a situation I was going to be able to charm my way through, dance around with an "okay I'm already doing it" or push past– no going around this obstacle.