Star Elite Traveller

I’ve always been a regular Joe when it comes to travelling. I jejely buy my economy tickets, go through the awful queues at MMA1 and moan and gripe along with everyone else about how crappy our dearest airport is. After going through the whole palava of checking in and all, I sit patiently and wait while they call the different categories to board and I’m almost always with the last group to board. I’m used to it. I hardly even think about it anymore. I guess it’s one of those things your mind just blocks out as part of its coping mechanism.

Then recently, I had the opportunity to travel with a couple of friends who had what is called the Star Elite Traveller status. You know, all those times that you go online to look for the cheapest tickets, and you see things like Air Miles blah, blah, someone like me just goes straight to sites like Opodo to go and look for the best deals. Who cares about buying from KLM just to get some Air Miles? So these guys have not only been jetting around the world like boomerangs, they’ve been accumulating these points and now they’re Star Elite Travellers. I feel like saying it one more time, just to…okay, I digress. So these guys are like the VVVVIPs of travelling. I guess somewhere in the periphery of my mind, I knew there were such things as Lounges at Airports but when you’re a gbogbo ero like me, you don’t allow yourself ponder such things too much. But because I was travelling with these guys, I was allowed a sneak peek into the Elite life.  At Heathrow, we just breezed through the whole check-in process, no long queues, no waiting around. My friends just flashed their cards and the airline staff simply opened up the retractable barriers and we waltzed through while the other passengers on the queue eyed us with jealous eyes. Even our luggage trolley was wheeled in for us and we were all checked in in a matter of minutes. Ah, this is the life! Then we were ushered into the Elite Lounge. I saw places I never even imagined existed within Heathrow’s Terminal 2! There was a never-ending buffet, free drinks, seats big enough to swallow me up, it was lit! Then when it was time to board, there was no walking through those zig-zagging tunnels (which get me claustrophobic). It was like they parked the plane right at our backyard and we just strolled on. No squeezing through miniature aisles, looking for your seat number and then trying to shove your carry-on into the tiny cubicles while the person already sitting on the aisle seat gives you the stink eye. We strolled onto the plane, sat in out mini-flats, stretched our legs (no annoying passenger in front of you pushing their seats in your face) and the drinks were on the ready from smiling hostesses (even those smiles were different from the ones you get in Economy, true!).

You know, by the time they asked the gbogbo ero to start boarding, I was probably half way through a movie already! And through the partly opened curtains that separated we the Elites from them, I could see them lumber onto the plane, looking really bleurgh with their tired grumpy faces, squalling toddlers and their gbogbo ero Economy tickets gripped in their hands as they started the weary task of settling in for a seven-hour flight in cramped quarters. That was them and this was me. I wasn’t one of them anymore, I was an Elite Traveller. I’d been invited into ‘The Club’ and it was oh so easy to see all that was wrong with those gbogbo ero. It wasn’t hard at all to point (and maybe even smirk) at how crappy and razz it was back there and to say to myself, thank God I’m not with that bunch. I couldn’t help my nose crinking up in distaste thinking of how messy the toilets get or how two people have conversations at the tops of their voices while everyone else is trying to sleep or how people would be taking silly selfies (okay, I’ll confess, I did take a photo or two in Business class, but who wouldn’t, eh?). It was really easy to distance myself from the common people.

This whole experience brings me, in a kinda weird, not-necessarily-logical way (I’ve come to realize that my mind doesn’t always work in a conventionally logical way) to the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. The Pharisees are probably some of the most un-liked people in Christendom. We talk about them and their shallow lives and I bet they’ve had their fair share of sermons preached about them. They’ve got a Rap sheet more than a mile long and it is really easy to dislike them, in fact, that’s the default setting. The thing however is that, after my one stint at Elite status, I’ve started to kinda find it hard to point the accusing finger at them. I don’t know about everyone else but I’ve realized (the Elite way no doubt) that once we get invited to the inner circles, it’s so easy to turn around and see what’s wrong with everyone else on the outside. It’s easy to forget how unpleasant the feeling of being the outcast is that we start to ostracize other people who we deem not up to our status. I can stand here and say with all the indignation in the world that the Pharisees were the ones who accused Jesus falsely, cooked up stupid lies and bribed false witnesses to have Him condemned. I can shout all I want that they were the ones who stirred up the crowd to demand for Barabbas’ release and all, but the truth is when Jesus hung on that hideous cross, just as much as the Pharisees, I put Him there. One bitter truth I’ve been having to chew and swallow lately is that I probably spend more time being a Pharisee than I’ll like to admit. And that picture I’m seeing of me ain’t pretty at all. What am I trying to say here? (Hey, I have absolutely nothing against being an Elite Traveller! In fact ehn, I’ve been hinting at those friends to you know, let us take another trip). My point is I constantly need to search my heart so that even when I stand and point fingers at the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, I’m not being a finger pointing Pharisee myself. I need God to put me in line so that if given even half the chance, I don’t become worse than the Pharisees I so easily condemn (you know, that thing about the speck and the log?). In my own little way, am I judging others or placing unfair burdens and standards (yeah, the Ten Commandments according to Yours Truly Tipsy) on them? Do I try to replace God’s grace and mercy with my own sense of right and wrong and judge others by my self-righteousness? This is just a heart-check for me so that as I go through this life-journey, whether I’m lounging in the Lounge (hehehe see rhymes!) with a Pina Colada or shuffling through those tiny aisles to the nightmare that the toilets become after about five hours into the flight, the only banner I want to be blazing through life is one that screams in capital letters: GRACE, GRACE! AMAZING GRACE!