| people-watching in airports and glimpses of the hereafter"I like to see people reunited, maybe that's a silly thing, but what can I say, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone, I sit on the side with a coffee and write in my daybook, I examine the flight schedules that I've already memorized, I observe, I write, I try not to remember the life that I didn't want to lose but lost and have to remember, being here fills my heart with some much joy, even if the joy isn't mine, and at the end of the day I fill the suitcase with old news."
-from Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close It's a well-known fact among Sociology majors at Covenant College that we're all people-watchers. It's what we do: we observe and record social interactions, from head nods to revolutions. We can theorize, too, but my favorite part is just taking in what people are doing, with wide eyes and an open mind. My favorite place to do this is, without a doubt, the airport. It beats out places like Starbucks and Bloomingdale's and Minute Maid Park, because those are niche markets -- you'd go there to watch a particular sector of society. No, just about everybody goes to the airport (even celebrities), so I see it as a kind of cross-section of society. And it beats out other cross-sections, like theme parks (which are pretty awesome, too), malls, and museums, because of the aforementioned wide eyes and open mind. Airports afford real-life (theme parks are out), un-ambiguously joyful interactions (goodbye to frustration-filled malls and angsty uppity museums). I can watch and check my intellect at the door, for the most part. Thoughts of my own love for airport people-watching began surfacing while I read this section in Foer's book. (By the way, college grads: how amazing is it to be able to pick up a book you're not writing a paper on?! Oh...actually, it appears that I'm writing a few words on the book I'm reading anyway. Well, old habits die hard, and I have thoughts, OK? :P) These thoughts grew in the past few days: I watched Love Actually again, a movie which begins and ends with people greeting each other at the airport; I talked with Steph today while she was waiting for her plane to Gatwick (and eventually Dublin); I've been looking at our upcoming trip to Germany, which includes stops at the hideous Charles de Gaulle airport and an all-too-short layover in Amsterdam. Airports are very present in my life, it seems. And reading that passage made my heart leap, because the pictures it painted in my head were magnificent. Heaven, I thought. This is what heaven will be like: the joy that no heart is big enough to contain, the ears and eyes that aren't big enough to take in the stories and songs and sights. This is what seeing my dad again will be like. This is what seeing my God, face to face, will be like. And this is why I can watch interactions like this at the airport with eyes wide open and face upturned: they are little glimpses of what things should be, what sin complicates, and what shalom speaks to. This is the way our God sees us. This is what we one day will be. I can't wait. |
