Airports

Airports.

I can’t decide if I love them or I hate them.

Every time I set foot in an airport, I have always been compelled to write about this amazing place as an attempt to sort out all my feelings about it.

For one thing, the airport excites me because it is a portal of adventure. I never mind going through all the necessary tedious processes of checking your bags in and going through immigration (which always scares me!) because there is an atmosphere of adventure, of many things that are waiting to happen. The last time I closed my eyes to go to sleep was within comforts of my room, but I know that come the next night, I would close the curtains and my eyes to a completely new scene.

Airports connect many places in the world (which are seemingly worlds apart), making the place we live in smaller than ever. They give you a chance to see beyond what you know, allowing you to expand your perspectives, as well as the borders of your imagination. They are starting points to where you can connect with other ways of living and with complete strangers you never thought you would meet. More importantly, airports allow you to see your loved ones, wherever they may be, giving you a chance to experience ‘home,’ not because you are in a place that you grew up in, but because you are with the people you have always grown to love.

On the other hand, airports have always been privy to one too many goodbyes. I cannot deny that a place such as this, which brings me much excitement, also brings me great sadness. It is a place of many goodbyes; it is a place of detachment. It tells us that we can never have too strong a grip on the things we like and the people we love, teaching us not to take possession and control of the things that make us happy but to appreciate them as they come and go.

Given all these, I can only think that airports are emotionally charged. If one day emotions could be a source of energy, then airports could be powerhouses that can supply us a lifetime of it. Whether airports make you sad or happy, they will forever be dynamic, bustling with activity and commotion. They will be there to present to us both ends of the spectrum of life- happiness and sadness, the familiar and the strange. There is always someone leaving, and always someone coming home.