Flying Lessons
When I came into the airport on my way to Sedona, I was hungry and found I had about 40 minutes to kill. So I went to get some food at Taco Bell. Then I looked for a place to sit.
The airport is like a no-man’s land. People there could be from anywhere, and most of them you will never see again. Something about it being a place whose sole purpose is to defy gravity makes me feel rootless there. Everyone is a stranger, and yet we all belong here. We all have something common – defying the tyranny of our current location. There’s an unvoiced camaraderie that makes us a unit – a drifting, rootless unit – all headed towards different destinations but with, fundamentally, the same common goal.
That’s my theory on why random strangers come up to you at airports and tell you some of the profoundest things about their lives.
Like when I sat down to wait for my Taco bell order, sipping on my coke. An African American man sat close to me. He looked young initially, but his thinning hairs betrayed his old age. As he unwrapped his burgher, he made the comment, “You can’t eat and walk at the same time.”
I smiled, cordially. Then, there was a long silence. It wasn’t awkward. We both understood the comment and the joke, and our silence was an acknowledgement of understanding. People say that men often bond over long moments of silence. In this case, it was true. We weren’t saying anything, but by not saying anything we were communicating that nothing needed to be said, so we were actually saying quite a bit.
Finally, I asked him, “Where are you from?” He answered that he was from Florida and asked where I was from. I told him, and then asked what had brought him to Fort Worth. “A funeral,” he said.
“Someone you know well?” I asked.
He nodded, staring straight ahead. “Yeah.”
A short silence. I looked at him, then away, then back. He stared steadily straight ahead. “That’s tough,” I ventured carefully.
“Yeah.” He hesitated, then looked at me. “Time will tell. Time will tell.” A pause. Then, “Gotta keep going. Life doesn’t stop… gotta keep going.” He stared straight ahead again.
My order was up. I went, got it, then sat back down at the counter. I thought about the funerals I had been to, looking for an experience that would relate to this man’s. I’ve been to some very nice funerals where I felt I had closure. Then there have been the one or two funerals that never got tied into a neat little bow, and the deaths still hurt so much that I think when I’m old and gray they may still come to mind every once in a while and make me cry.
I wondered what experience this man had. I prompted him. “Most of the funerals I attended have been in California.”
He nodded, then changed the subject. He talked about how his brother-in-law was drunk and wanted company the previous night, but he had wanted to see his children (he was 50 years old and apparently had several kids living in Phoenix). Evidently, the inability to do two things at once frustrated him a great deal, because I could see a lot of pain on his face as he explained the situation. Sometimes, you have to choose who you are going to support and be loyal to. Sometimes, you have to choose between grief and getting on with life. Sometimes, you have to choose between eating and walking, because you can’t eat and walk at the same time.
After I sympathized with his story, he looked at his watch and announced that he had to go. I was genuinely concerned about him by this point, and I kinda felt like we were getting to be friends.
I have to figure out a better way to say goodbye to someone in an airport. When he left, I said, “See you later.” It was too late to correct the statement when I realized I’d probably never see him again. I’d probably never know if he actually made it through his tough time. I mean, I didn’t even get his name.
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On the plane, I met an older lady who was flying back from Costa Rica. She was excited about coming back from her trip. She talked about riding the rapids, going across rope bridges, trekking it through the wilderness. She had gone with a larger group of older people, who were all part of a traveling club. I asked her if this was her first trip. It wasn’t – she was part of several vacation clubs and liked to travel frequently to exotic places.
I should have been genuinely happy for her, but I found myself instead wondering why someone would want to travel so often. The way she talked, it seemed that, in spite of years of searching, she was still looking for Home.
_______________________________________________________________________________
On the plane ride back to Fort Worth from Phoenix, I sat beside an old man. He told me that he was coming to Fort Worth to judge a competition, and from Fort Worth he was going to Mexico to attend a reunion with the high school choir he had headed – fifty years ago. He had been 23 years old.
He said that it felt like yesterday, which was disturbing. Today, I’m 26 years old. To hear that 70 years old is right around the corner is a bit frightening.
I also related to some other things he said. For example, he had retired a few years ago from heading up the music department at Arizona State University. He said that he had a history of being young for the things he did. He talked about each of his accomplishments that got him to his current point with relish. Apparently, he had gone to college with three really close friends, and they used to play basketball together in their early twenties. Each of these friends graduated and became very successful in the field of education; they all had illustrious careers. He told me that, last year, he brought the basketball out again to the friends. He told them they were going to play horse. With a smile, he recounted that they couldn’t even get the ball to hit the rim…
I could tell he missed yesterday.
It makes me not want to waste my life. This man had a career that would make most of those in the field of education envious. He touched countless lives and made tremendous impact. His eyes were bright and merry and young, even though his age was 76. Maybe I should’ve been happy about his life, and grateful that he could look back on it all the way he could.
But I didn’t -- at least, not at the moment. To be honest, the scenario he portrayed really scared me. Even if I live the perfect life, and everything goes as planned, and I touch countless lives and live a life of joy and prestige, tomorrow I will be old and wrinkled and rapidly approaching death.
It’s a sobering thought. The here and now isn’t enough to live for or boast about, because no matter how incredible your life is, death will cancel it all out. Unless, of course, there is a God that defeats death -- in which case, death will cancel everything out except what matters to God. Which makes God's opinion really, really, really important.
Maybe knowledge of that last thought is what kept the light in the old man’s eyes. I never got a chance to ask him before touching back down in Fort Worth, with my feet back on the ground and feeling, once again, the gravity of my everyday life.
The airport is like a no-man’s land. People there could be from anywhere, and most of them you will never see again. Something about it being a place whose sole purpose is to defy gravity makes me feel rootless there. Everyone is a stranger, and yet we all belong here. We all have something common – defying the tyranny of our current location. There’s an unvoiced camaraderie that makes us a unit – a drifting, rootless unit – all headed towards different destinations but with, fundamentally, the same common goal.
That’s my theory on why random strangers come up to you at airports and tell you some of the profoundest things about their lives.
Like when I sat down to wait for my Taco bell order, sipping on my coke. An African American man sat close to me. He looked young initially, but his thinning hairs betrayed his old age. As he unwrapped his burgher, he made the comment, “You can’t eat and walk at the same time.”
I smiled, cordially. Then, there was a long silence. It wasn’t awkward. We both understood the comment and the joke, and our silence was an acknowledgement of understanding. People say that men often bond over long moments of silence. In this case, it was true. We weren’t saying anything, but by not saying anything we were communicating that nothing needed to be said, so we were actually saying quite a bit.
Finally, I asked him, “Where are you from?” He answered that he was from Florida and asked where I was from. I told him, and then asked what had brought him to Fort Worth. “A funeral,” he said.
“Someone you know well?” I asked.
He nodded, staring straight ahead. “Yeah.”
A short silence. I looked at him, then away, then back. He stared steadily straight ahead. “That’s tough,” I ventured carefully.
“Yeah.” He hesitated, then looked at me. “Time will tell. Time will tell.” A pause. Then, “Gotta keep going. Life doesn’t stop… gotta keep going.” He stared straight ahead again.
My order was up. I went, got it, then sat back down at the counter. I thought about the funerals I had been to, looking for an experience that would relate to this man’s. I’ve been to some very nice funerals where I felt I had closure. Then there have been the one or two funerals that never got tied into a neat little bow, and the deaths still hurt so much that I think when I’m old and gray they may still come to mind every once in a while and make me cry.
I wondered what experience this man had. I prompted him. “Most of the funerals I attended have been in California.”
He nodded, then changed the subject. He talked about how his brother-in-law was drunk and wanted company the previous night, but he had wanted to see his children (he was 50 years old and apparently had several kids living in Phoenix). Evidently, the inability to do two things at once frustrated him a great deal, because I could see a lot of pain on his face as he explained the situation. Sometimes, you have to choose who you are going to support and be loyal to. Sometimes, you have to choose between grief and getting on with life. Sometimes, you have to choose between eating and walking, because you can’t eat and walk at the same time.
After I sympathized with his story, he looked at his watch and announced that he had to go. I was genuinely concerned about him by this point, and I kinda felt like we were getting to be friends.
I have to figure out a better way to say goodbye to someone in an airport. When he left, I said, “See you later.” It was too late to correct the statement when I realized I’d probably never see him again. I’d probably never know if he actually made it through his tough time. I mean, I didn’t even get his name.
_________________________________________________________________________________
On the plane, I met an older lady who was flying back from Costa Rica. She was excited about coming back from her trip. She talked about riding the rapids, going across rope bridges, trekking it through the wilderness. She had gone with a larger group of older people, who were all part of a traveling club. I asked her if this was her first trip. It wasn’t – she was part of several vacation clubs and liked to travel frequently to exotic places.
I should have been genuinely happy for her, but I found myself instead wondering why someone would want to travel so often. The way she talked, it seemed that, in spite of years of searching, she was still looking for Home.
_______________________________________________________________________________
On the plane ride back to Fort Worth from Phoenix, I sat beside an old man. He told me that he was coming to Fort Worth to judge a competition, and from Fort Worth he was going to Mexico to attend a reunion with the high school choir he had headed – fifty years ago. He had been 23 years old.
He said that it felt like yesterday, which was disturbing. Today, I’m 26 years old. To hear that 70 years old is right around the corner is a bit frightening.
I also related to some other things he said. For example, he had retired a few years ago from heading up the music department at Arizona State University. He said that he had a history of being young for the things he did. He talked about each of his accomplishments that got him to his current point with relish. Apparently, he had gone to college with three really close friends, and they used to play basketball together in their early twenties. Each of these friends graduated and became very successful in the field of education; they all had illustrious careers. He told me that, last year, he brought the basketball out again to the friends. He told them they were going to play horse. With a smile, he recounted that they couldn’t even get the ball to hit the rim…
I could tell he missed yesterday.
It makes me not want to waste my life. This man had a career that would make most of those in the field of education envious. He touched countless lives and made tremendous impact. His eyes were bright and merry and young, even though his age was 76. Maybe I should’ve been happy about his life, and grateful that he could look back on it all the way he could.
But I didn’t -- at least, not at the moment. To be honest, the scenario he portrayed really scared me. Even if I live the perfect life, and everything goes as planned, and I touch countless lives and live a life of joy and prestige, tomorrow I will be old and wrinkled and rapidly approaching death.
It’s a sobering thought. The here and now isn’t enough to live for or boast about, because no matter how incredible your life is, death will cancel it all out. Unless, of course, there is a God that defeats death -- in which case, death will cancel everything out except what matters to God. Which makes God's opinion really, really, really important.
Maybe knowledge of that last thought is what kept the light in the old man’s eyes. I never got a chance to ask him before touching back down in Fort Worth, with my feet back on the ground and feeling, once again, the gravity of my everyday life.
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