(Is it the beginning of a revolution?)

Flying has been the vanguard of dehumanizing experiences. There was a time when flying was special, a marvel of human achievement. People dressed up. They served meals. Today, you deal with websites, automated customer service that doesn’t understand you, and everything comes with a price tag, and those prices change based on who you are. You are a number in a system attached to a value, the system is designed to increase that value, and that’s it.

My daughter changed the game.

Small acts can restore the humanity that systems take from us - even start a revolution.

It’s not just flying; the airlines just got started early and led the charge.

I remember when I was a kid, and we’d go skiing. You’d walk up to the counter, buy a lift ticket, and hit the slopes. Now, if you don’t reserve weeks in advance, you end up paying an extra couple of hundred dollars. Spontaneity requires deep pockets or a season pass.

Customer service is, well, you know. And I’m not going to talk about politics. Really. Well, maybe a bit: we seem obsessed with tearing each other down, defining others as enemies, and reinforcing polarizing views.

It’s not that everything is bad. In truth, flights are also inexpensive, frequent, and reasonably reliable (yes, they are, even the luggage usually arrives), and high-speed chair lifts are worth whatever we pay for them. Politics, well, I don’t know. So, I’m not romanticizing the past; I simply think it would be nice to bring some humanity back into our day-to-day.

Which brings me back to my daughter, who showed up at 4 for her 5:50 flight. After a series of cancellations and reschedulings, she went home around 9, with a new boarding pass for the next day.

She was annoyed and disappointed.

Now, normally, when the airline has let us down, and we are annoyed and disappointed, we tend to act a bit annoyed and disappointed. By we I mean me, but I’ve seen enough other annoyed and disappointed people in airports to know I’m not alone.

The cabin crew and gate staff have to deal with our annoyance. But in reality, they are just as annoyed. They often also face dehumanizing working conditions, low pay, and, not to mention, annoyed, disappointed, and generally unhappy passengers.

None of it is their fault. They didn’t create the conditions; they are just flowing through the same mechanical process we are. As passengers, we do this sometimes; they have to do it every day.

Even frequent flyers don’t have to put up with as much.

Somehow, my 19-year-old daughter realized that, as bad a day as she was having, the cabin crew was likely having it worse. So she did something to change the game.

I’d like to say that this is a result of excellent parentage, and one of the stewardesses told her to tell her parents that we had raised a “wonderful young lady.” But there’s a point at which your offspring plot their own course, and this was all her.

What she did was give them a bag of good chocolates as she got on the flight (Ghirardelli, made with cocoa, not Mars made with vegetable oil). She even drew a picture of a girl giving a thumbs up on the bag.

It blew the cabin crew away. They asked if she worked for the airline, if she knew someone, or what was going on. But she said it was just to thank them in advance. She wasn’t trying to get into first class (there wasn’t one) or get free drinks (she’s under 21); it was simply a gesture.

A human gesture.

The flight attendant thanked her publicly for spoiling them with chocolates, joking that it was the only reason the pilot rode out the bumpy flight and didn’t return home.

It’s telling that such a small thing can have such a meaningful impact.

But it doesn’t take much to recognize each other’s humanity. The meaning isn’t in the chocolates. It’s in being seen, recognizing the shared experience, and acknowledging the other’s humanity.

You may read this and think I’m attributing a bit too much to a bag of chocolates. Sure, it’d be nice to stop wars and have everybody just get along, but revolutions don’t happen overnight. Even Gandhi started by drying seawater to make salt. Hardly the thing of revolutions.

Or maybe it is. Maybe the ultimate revolution is not playing by the dehumanizing rules… and just giving each other chocolates.

Hey, since you made it this far, let me know what you think. Leave a comment. What random acts of kindness have ever inspired you? Also, you might also be interested in the latest over at Masters of Influence:

When Saving Lives Costs Doctors Their Jobs (how facts backfire

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How my daughter humanized flying with a bag of chocolates