The Tuna Can Of Acceptance

What a 14-hour flight with a toddler taught me about not wishing life were otherwise

There’s something uniquely humbling about being thirty thousand feet in the air with a two-year-old.

We’d just finished a lovely trip visiting family in Korea. My wife’s parents live there; mine are in Canada. So, our son has already spent his fair share of time in the air. But this last flight—fourteen hours from Seoul to Frankfurt, followed by a transfer home —taught me something.

He slept twice, but only for an hour and a half each time. That left roughly eleven hours of walking up and down the aisles, bouncing, whispering, distracting, containing. No meltdowns, no disasters—just relentless wakefulness.

I, on the other hand, had slept maybe four hours the night before. I was already starting from empty. There’s a particular kind of fatigue that only parents know, a combination of physical depletion and emotional surrender.

At one point, I caught myself thinking, Why can’t he just sleep? Why can’t I just have a break? I wish this were easier.

That was the moment the lesson appeared—the one that’s been sitting quietly beneath every long-haul flight, every sleepless night, every toddler tantrum: never wish for things to be otherwise.