Layover

An airport terminal is a fascinating place. So many worlds collide, and yet rarely do these worlds leave a mark on each other: people walk quickly past each other, oblivious to the lives brushing against them with their tensed shoulders. There is an unavoidable disconnectedness, a sort of mortal limbo. No one is where he wants to be yet—he is in transition, whether this is a layover on his way to Mexico City or the place where he’ll pick up his checked baggage and walk out into Denver, Colorado.

A woman in a pink tracksuit hurries her little boy along, not even glancing at the skinny young man standing alone in khakis and an argyle sweater-vest. He has the sort of hairstyle that might have been popular in my sophomore year of high school, and He looks too young to be carrying the official-looking briefcase in his left hand; then again, maybe I’m too young to be sitting in an airport terminal with a notebook, contemplating the lives of hundreds of people whom I will never meet.

Fair enough.

Airports don’t get the attention they deserve. Each terminal is a smorgasbord of humanity: toddlers and senior citizens, college students and college dropouts, businessmen and mid-thirties yoga instructors from Miami. They teem with life, with memories, with upset stomachs and walking sticks and lost luggage. Every pair of feet rushing by has walked in different places, and my hands itch to write their stories. But what right do I have to put myself in their path? I certainly never earned it. Then again, if I never put myself into others’ lives, how will I ever be able to form any relationships at all? One must be willing to risk a thousand forgettable encounters in order to experience the one that is meaningful.