A few weeks ago I was flying out of my local (pretty small) airport when I got in line behind a woman who didn’t speak English and by the looks of it, didn’t travel by plane often.

No one in the airport spoke her language so she was becoming increasingly anxious and frantic with every interaction.

As she was loading her stuff up on the TSA x-ray belt, the agent started giving her the spiel (laptop, liquids, shoes, etc) and it was clear that the woman didn’t understand. She started to panic and looked like she was going to have an anxiety attack when the TSA agent stopped what she was doing and started gesturing to take deep breaths. They took a few deep breaths together and afterwards, the woman was able to make it through the scanner just fine.

This happened almost a month ago and I still look back at it and smile. I love knowing that the TSA agent saw a fellow human struggling and offered kindness rather than piling onto her anxiety. Very pure.