I’m sitting in an airport. My flight home boards in about 40 minutes. It’s Chicago O’Hare. This is a busy airport.
People walking to their gates. People walking to get food. People talking on their phones. People looking at their phones while they walk. People wheeling luggage behind them. Families stopped in the middle of traffic while Mom digs through her purse to find her phone. She wants a picture of her son and daughter standing in the lane. People with bicep muscles. People wearing suits. People with headphones. People dressed like they come from a different country. People walking with their hands in their pockets and a bag on their backs. Couples. Young. Used-to-be-young. A little boy sitting on top of the stroller hood while Dad pushes. An off-duty pilot reading the Wall Street Journal. The jobless rate has fallen to a 16-year low.
This terminal has a glass ceiling. Flags from every country you can name glow in sunlight that doesn’t know enough to stay outside. There’s a man with a cart who makes occasional stops to sweep trash into his butler. He’s not in a hurry. The bits of straw wrapper and sandwich bread crust seem to multiply without end.
All kinds of folks with somewhere to be. It’s a wave of humanity all on their way. I’m not sure anyone wants to be here. But we choose to be. Because it’s how we’ll get where we’re going.
That’s not good enough for some of us though. We’re not content to be where we are and to go where we’re going. We need to assert ourselves. We need to impress ourselves. We need things to be a certain way. And when they aren’t, we need to make them that way.
Some of us are willing to shed blood, if that’s what it takes.
This isn’t something new.
I fear it won’t ever be something that’s old.
But nothing is impossible.
Until then, I’ll be here. Waiting to find myself where I’m going.
