Welcome to the Happiness Podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. Today I want to share two stories

with us that happened to me, but the way I experienced them was very different.

The first story happened when I was in graduate school many years ago, getting my first master's

degree in comparative religion.

During one of my summer breaks, I had the opportunity to go to the far

east and particularly India for two months. Well if you haven't been to India, it's a beautiful

country but it's very different than what we experience here in the West.

Well, after traveling there for two months on a shoestring budget because I was a graduate student.

I was in New Delhi and my plane left the following week. It left once a week.

It was one of those odd tickets where the plane left once a week from New Delhi and it was flying

back to England. Well, I was at the end of that two months really, really ready to leave. I was exhausted.

And so what I thought I'd do is I thought I'd go to the airport and see if I could get on the flight earlier, the previous week flight, and go home, because I just needed to be gone.

Well, when I got there, the people working for the airline told me there wasn't any space and I could go

standby but they had no idea if I would be able to get on. The plane was

completely full so if I was going to get on it had to be because someone else

canceled their trip and after that point no one had

so it was based upon people basically not showing up and I would get their seat.

Well this is where my suffering really began to kick in.

When I had made a decision to go back home a week

earlier, I was done. I just needed to get home. And that was my only option. So when they

told me that I may not get on, I sort of went into emotional

panic. It was a few hours before the flight left, and I remember just pacing back and

...