I hope I spend many, many non-consecutive hours in airports throughout my life, because I know that will be a direct result of many, many travels to places both familiar and unfamiliar. That is a pretty cool feat all on its own, but recently I've become more and more fond of the simple process of waiting to fly, and then finally flying.
One of the first things I love about being in the airport is the fact that it connects so many people and so many places for a millisecond before people get on their flights and new faces shuffle in. Walking past the signs I saw flights going to so many different places: Texas, Haiti, Brazil, among many others. It's awesome to think about how many people from all these different places are all going to completely different places all at the same time. There are literally millions of stories that could be told by each and every passenger. It makes me want to sit and ask people the simple things:
Where are you from? Where are you going? Where do you hope to go? And I know if I did ask that, no two answers would ever be exactly the same. Diversity and the complexity of a human life are seriously the coolest.
Of course, one of the most exciting parts about flying somewhere is the actual flying. I'm like a little kid again when I'm told I get the window seat because then I know I can sit there with my face in the window the entire however-many-hours flight and no one will be bothered.
The sky is like no work of art I've ever seen before, and the clouds look hand painted. My last flight I was fortunate enough to be flying into a sunset, and the red and pink hues were nothing short of breathtaking. Even without the sunset, the sky is a work of art. Seeing the clouds from above never gets old to me, and sometimes I imagine just like a child what it would be like if I could hop from one cloud to the next, and how cool it would be if we could float along on them. Someone once told me that when I moved to Florida from Massachusetts, I'd soon realize that the sky here is much prettier than up north, and it's true. The frequent rain causes the sky to darken often with storm clouds, which is slightly terrifying but mostly beautiful.
The descent was incredible too, especially seeing the land near nighttime. Since it was beginning to get dark, many lights were on to illuminate people's houses or their cars down the highway. Seeing all the little lights made me think of how someone would view us from up above: as lots of little blinking lights. It helped me to understand how small our little space in the world is because, for every one light, I could spot thousands of others. So next time I'm in an airport waiting anxiously for my adventure to begin, I'll remember all the beauty that comes in anticipation of the journey. I find that adventure can begin as soon as I step outside.
