Airport Connections

Airports are the coolest thing ever.

People from literally all over the world come and go through airports. Yet most of the time, we never seem to notice. I had two hours between flights, so I grabbed an overpriced (but delicious) sandwich, and sat down to eat.

While I was sitting down to eat, and even when I was walking to the next terminal, I heard snippets of conversations. Very small snippets. But those snippets were what made the experience cool. Because in that three or four seconds that you catch someone else’s conversation, you realize what a crazy, vast, diverse, beautiful world we live in. I heard so many different languages. I heard dialects, and I heard what was on that person’s mind at that exact moment.

“We can collaborate with Sarah when I get to…” is something I am hearing the women behind me say. The man to my left has an accent that might be Russian, but it doesn’t sound quite as thick as a Russian accent. He is talking on the phone in (presumably) a mix of Russian and English. When I was walking on the moving sidewalk, I heard even less conversation as I whipped by. I heard parents talking to their children, and boyfriends talking to their girlfriends. The small African girl in front of me is talking to her mother in I don’t even know what language. They exchange words then laugh for a second.

This is so interesting to me because in this hub of international travelers, we all still seem to be in our own little world. There are at least two seats between each person (which is understandable, I think), and everyone is either on their laptop or on their phone. That includes me. Yet everyone has such different lifestyles and lives. Their world is so incredibly different from mine, and I almost want to ask everyone where they’re from and what they do for a living.

It’s just one of those things that blows my mind.

There are seven billion people in the world, and most of the time, we surround ourselves with the same [insert population of the town you live in here] people. Isn’t it crazy that when we go to a place as diverse and fast-paced as an airport, we often don’t bat an eye? Sure, we have planes to catch, places to go, people to see. But stopping and listening in the middle of a busy airport can really make the world seem like an amazing, vast place.