I don’t know where you’re going, and to be honest, I don’t even really care.
I hardly know where I’m going, but I think that might be a story for another time.
It’s funny how this happens, isn’t it? I’m sitting here in the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport on an eight-hour layover in Atlanta, and I’ve suddenly realized that there is life all around me. We’re all on the road heading somewhere, whether it’s the next state over or halfway across the world, and everyone here has a different story to tell.
Sometimes I like to make up my own.
The man with the cowboy hat and the business briefcase? He’s heading to Texas for a conference, but he’s made sure to set aside some time for the rodeo. The carefree-looking guy with dreadlocks down to the small of his back and his shabby flip flops nearly falling apart with every step he takes? He’s off to find himself at a 70’s-inspired concert, where scoring some weed is a nice bonus. The redhead walking along slowly with her head to the ground? She’s heading home to a family that doesn’t always get along, and she’s holding it together, but just barely.
And what about me? What do I look like to everyone that’s sitting there doing the same thing as me?
Where is this girl going, all alone with her red eyes and her red nose? She tried to cover up those telltale signs of a crying fit in the ladies room mirror, but you can still probably tell that something’s wrong if you get close enough. Who knows where she just came from, where she’s going, or why she’s been crying? Airports are full of the tears of goodbyes, but no one ever really wants to see that. It’s too painful to acknowledge over and over again.
I can’t even begin to imagine the stories people might form off of this rather pitiful impression I give off. I’d like to hear them, to be honest. I like entertaining myself with these little whims—whether they’re my own fantasies about others or others’ about me.
None of it matters, not in the slightest, but it provides adequate entertainment for those lonely-in-a-crowd-of-thousands hours you spend in an airport terminal.
It’s humbling: seeing all of these people whose lives I’ll never be a part of, who I’ll probably never see again—just coming and going all at once. In fact, it’s overwhelming. It’s too much for my mind to make sense of, and that’s why I make up these silly little stories about everyone, because it’s too much to think about.
Everyone here in this human hive has a story.
Everyone here has more baggage than what they’re carrying in their hands.
I would make up something about that, but it would feel too much like sacrilege to me. I concoct these little stories to explain the people on the surface, but underneath, there’s a living, breathing human being with joys and sorrows just like mine. They may actually be even more bizarre than the things that I make up, but I want to respect that. I don’t want to figure them all out because they deserve their own identity that only they hold close to their heart that an observant stranger can’t read from across the gate.
I want that same kind of respect, too. I want people to notice me, but at the same time, I want to curl up here in a lonely little corner and just guard myself and hope no one sees my red eyes and my red nose.
I don’t think settings like this let you really appreciate the humanity of everyone until you really sit down and think about it. We’re all just strangers here—we just show a very, very small portion of who we are to the person who is rushing through the concourse and breathlessly asks us for the time. We’re generally polite with each other. Well, alright, we’re decent with each other. Some people are cranky and irritable, but in my experience, most people treat each other, at the very least, decently. But that’s it. We’re not here to make friends or learn about other people. We’re here because we’re going somewhere else that’s more important than this place.
