Today I am traveling to see my family for the holidays. In the aftermath of yesterday’s horrifying event in a Connecticut elementary school, I am feeling muted and heavy, not my usual travelling self. I have been so incredibly busy that I am already exhausted, a little grumpy and not myself these days. I am looking forward to some time off to get back to myself, more compassionate, patient and loving than I have been lately.
On my layover in New York, I am in a small wing of the airport that is filled with bar like desks set up with iPad after iPad free for passengers waiting for their flights. I’ve never seen anything like it. I got a snack and settled in with my laptop to watch a movie during my long layover, acutely aware that this isn’t my usual choice of activity but I am too tired to think too much so I plug in. Like so many people around me. During a heartfelt moment in my movie, I looked around me and paused it, noticing how usually spend my airport time people watching and reflecting on myself and the world around me. Who are all of these people? Where are they going and what is happening for them in this moment? Are the heading to see a loved one? Going to a funeral? For some reason airports invoke this kind of though process for me, I have time to just watch the world go ‘round and consider the humanness of the people around me.
I stopped my movie to talk with my sister and then shut everything down to wait out the last half an hour before boarding. I sat at the high top to wait, an iPad in front of me flashing “Stay Connected, surf the web on us!” As I glanced around me I took notice of the majority of the people plugged into some sort of device. In front of an iPad, laptop, on a phone or Kindle. In some ways these people are staying connected to friends, family and the world around them, and yet at the same time we are disconnecting from the immediate world around us. No one is talking to strangers about their trip. No one is sharing in a mutual experience. We are staying safely in the digital world, private and individual within the masses of people in the airport. We are staying busy and engaged in a strange disconnected world. Where is the time to reflect, disengage, connect to ourselves and the actual PEOPLE around us?
I am fully part of this movement. I have my laptop with me, which I didn’t even own a couple of years ago. I have my iPhone next to me. I spend more time on them than I realize, because it’s easy to be engaged with them and forget what life was like before they were a priority or even existed. But every once in a while I think about what I am missing by devoting myself so fully to “staying connected.” Am I being true to myself, the person that I think I am by rarely disengaging to interact with my surroundings?
The horrifying death of so many children and adults yesterday invokes many thoughts and arguments. I’m not sure sometimes which of them are “right” or “wrong.” But I find myself in the end, being discouraged by all of the chatter and the lack of action. We ask a lot of questions, but do we really have any perspective on how to change this world we have created? How do we really connect with each other to stop such horrible events?
As I type this, I hear a small child singing the ABC’s. I listen and look up to notice other people around me doing the same. Two women who I think are together and a man who seems to be on his own sit near me. When the child is finished one of the women claps and we all look at each other and smile. We make eye contact. And share a real, endearing, human moment. Maybe despite recent tragedy, there is still hope. There is still connection.
