As I wait for a flight to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I sit here at O’Hare airport in Chicago and indulge in a past time of mine when being in a crowded place. That is looking at people go by. I always maintain that part of Chicago’s “wildlife” has to be the people that make up the daily environment around my neighborhood. And, yet, here, at O’Hare, I am witness to more people going by than a year of hanging out in a corner of my neighborhood.
Part of the game for me is looking at people and trying to guess what age they are. Some of course are exceptionally easy to guess. Kids, teen-agers, and young adults. Then you have people who are perhaps half a century older than the oldest "young adult," usually zipping by on a golf-cart people mover, bleating a horn to get people out of the way.
Then there are those people. These are the ones that I find myself wondering: Am I as old as they are? Are they younger than me? Who are they?
It’s odd to be in that middle of humanity.
These are the people who are not at either ends of the spectrum, so to speak. Yet, they are the ones who seem to fill out this space at the airport. Each of them lugging behind them, some odd, airline mandated carryon that could easily be their life story.
What story do these folks have about their lives rolling behind them?
Each one must be interesting, I think, as every shape, color, gender, race and dress goes by with their brightly colored carry-ons of who they have been up to this very moment.
It hits me hard.
Here, there are thousands of humans moving by me as a river of the unknown. They are mysterious and as out of touch to my sensibilities as the Amazon flowing thousands of miles to the south. Any explorer of the past would find themselves at home here, gazing at the spectacle of wild and uncharted humanity.
I sit back from my perch at the gate, and I wonder.
I am nearing that brink of 60. That it is just another number in a long line of numbers that I have merited merely by existing for 60 revolutions around the sun.
But it is here where suddenly I am forced to ponder my existence. A place where I am witnessing a torrent of humanity flowing past me. Now, my age sticks out in my own consciousness as some snarled tree, leaning and about to fall into the current.
We all have to face age and as we age, we all have some odd story that is ours alone that we can either choose to share or maybe not. These are our carry-ons. We haul them behind us as so many tropically bright fish in a fast-moving stream.
How many similarities are there with people who are passing by where I am writing with my own life? What do I have in common with the three German passengers who are apparently waiting for the same flight as me? And what strange quirk of events has proceeded to have me not meet anyone in this space thus far? How can it be plausible that we are all strangers here, strangers willingly pulling behind us our brightly colored selves?
The humbling enormity of humanity is getting to me today. It is a minor miracle that we all agree or proceed to cooperate on anything, I think. It is a minor miracle that we can all be moved by music or art. It is a minor miracle when one can make a recognizable difference in the world. How can we be able to recognize any other being when each of us lugs this sense of who we are with such determination?
Somehow, at an airport, it all sort of falls into perspective.
My hope is that 60 spins around the sun, I have been able to make a difference. But also, with so many revolutions on this planet, I am aware of the mind-boggling improbability of being able to make a difference on a scale that others can and do. But also the reminder that there are millions upon millions who also are like me. Doing their part in their own little galaxy of self-dom. Whether they wish to acknowledge the torrent around them is the question. Whether we find out what is in that carry-on of themselves or not, it is still pulled and carried. It is still as equally or maybe even more important than what I haul behind my own self.
Still, I worry to myself as I observe. Can we do what is needed to touch souls and change our world back to the Eden it once truly was? Can we see that each of us has something precious carried behind them that no one may never know, but still the world needs to cherish?
My reverie is broken by a young man in a United Airline uniform making a garbled announcement. “We will board as soon as the cleaning crew is finished.”
Out comes that crew twenty minutes later. Two men and three women. Black, Hispanic, White, Asian. One in a hijab. One wearing a baseball cap. All looking tired of trying to keep pace with this roaring river that they have to navigate each day.
What they pull behind themselves are vacuums, a bucket, rags and a plastic trash bag.
Did they clean the plane? I wonder to myself.
Do they ever get to pull some brightly colored carry on behind them?
I board and the flight attendant greets me with a sanitary wipe.
I find my seat, open the wipe and wipe down everything.
I feel guilty as I watch this torrent of people settle into their seats.
I am lost in a river, and I am almost 60 years old.
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