Meditations on losing my luggage

 I try to live a spiritual life, meaning that, to the best of my ability, I aim to supress the baser parts of my nature and avoid egoism, anger, resentment, fear, and contempt. This aspiration has been tested the past two weeks because, for the first time in all my decades of flying, an airline (Aer Lingus) lost my luggage. The purpose of my travel has accentuated the ordeal. I am not on vacation; rather, I flew to Coventry (UK) and then to Trento (Italy) for academic purposes, and will be in Europe all summer. Thus the luggage contained the essentials for a long academic trip, as well as the clothing that I have meticulously selected and accumulated over the years. Aer Lingus’s customer service has only made things worse. Over the past two weeks I have called them repeatedly, and they seem to be utterly helpless; their assistance amounts to politely telling me that they are working on it, they are sending messages to the airports where the luggage might be stored, yada yada yada…at this point, almost two weeks after they lost it, I have become a bit resigned to the fiasco, but this sense of resignation is at times mixed with anger and sadness. As often happens with emotionally intense experiences that disrupt familiar patterns and routines, I have reflected on its deeper meaning.

An apt reaction

First, a few thoughts on the nature of loss. Objectively speaking, I have not really lost anything significant, since the things that matter most—health, work, loved ones—are still in excellent shape. Everything in that luggage can be replaced, whereas losing the things previously mentioned can be devastating and scarring. I was reminded about the nature of REAL loss last week when I discovered that a childhood friend named Lucia, the same age as me (39), died of cancer, leaving behind a husband as well as a child who will grow up without her mother. Intellectually it is easy to grasp that, in the grand scheme of things, losing money, or things that can be replaced with money, is relatively insignificant. And yet this easily grasped and simple truth does not automatically translate into positive emotions. Rather, when I reflect on losing my luggage, I feel frustration, anger, and contempt towards Aer Lingus; I begin scheming on how I might take legal action against this badly run company for causing seemingly earth shattering problems—such as not having my favourite shirt, or the book I need to reference, or those brand new Aldo shoes I bought for the trip.

I have also reflected on the anonymous and de-personalized character of economic activity in the modern age. In previous economic systems (and still within small communities), economic exchanges were tied to personal relationships. Thus one’s baker and clothes vendor might also be married to your friend, or a third cousin. The customer is not simply an agent treated instrumentally according to the calculation of profit. Rather, they are persons with needs and vulnerabilities; they may be potential romantic partners, relatives, or friends; and their well-being is closely tied to an intricate web of relationships among members of the community. Thus an economic exchange was not simply selling a good. It was also a link in a complex chain of value which transcends mere financial profit and loss. Exchanges with large corporations, on the other hand, can have the feel of interacting with faceless bureaucrats in a distant capital who administer a colonial territory. There are no emotional ties between seller and buyer, and hence the distress of the latter carries no meaning or significance to the former. Rather, when things go wrong—such as, say, when one’s luggage with valued personal items is lost—there are procedures to follow that, it is hoped, will resolve the problem. When these procedures work, distress is reduced. When they don’t, as in my case, the situation becomes all the more frustrating because representatives of the company are helpless. They cannot leave their cubicles and personally search for your valued items, nor can they transfer funds to reimburse you. All they can do is follow the rule book even when the rules are clearly not working.

The point is not to condemn industrial capitalism and wax poetical about earlier economic forms. Taken to its logical conclusion, this would imply that we were better off in hunter and gatherer groups, when economic agents were closely related through ties of blood, reciprocity, and obligation. Emotional ties may have been strong within tribes, but few would conclude that their economic activities were therefore better (although these past few weeks, I have come close). But one can appreciate the blessings of the modern economy, such having the choice to fly across the Atlantic in less than half a day, while recognizing some of its downfalls, such as the unaccountable, faceless, nameless, anonymous, and depersonalized administrative apparatus of large corporations which are hapless to resolve issues that create serious difficulties for customers. Of course, the liberal (in the philosophical sense of the term) might say, I can vote with my wallet and take my business elsewhere. That’ll show em! Well, not exactly. This option works only when many customers are experiencing the same problems and all decide to signal their displeasure by purchasing the goods of a competitor. I suspect that the luggage of most Aer Lingus passengers arrives at their destination, and hence the frustrations of a small portion of clients is insufficient to produce real accountability. The market mechanism, therefore, works only when a critical threshold is passed. Before then, there is a wide margin for errors; meanwhile accountability remains elusive for those on the receiving end of these mistakes.

If only!

I’d like to conclude this post with some reflections on what I began with, namely, the difficulty of practising spiritual principles while experiencing the frustrations of losing one’s luggage. As many gurus might say, when experiencing difficulty, it is useful to remind oneself to be grateful for the good things in life. Generally this is probably good advice, since, objectively speaking, losing things that can be replaced with money is not really a big deal. And yet—yet—loss is relative. Thus, for example, the fact that I am in pain when stumping my toe is not lessened by the knowledge that thousands are dying in civil wars. Correspondingly, the stress of losing my luggage through no fault of my own is not necessarily reduced because I am acutely aware of still possessing the things that, when lost, cannot be replaced. Therefore, frustration in itself is not abnormal, provided it is placed in its proper context. 

The spiritual guru might also say that resentment against a faceless corporation is ultimately pointless, and that forgiveness is key. Point taken, although I’ll never fly Aer Lingus again.