I was reading a blog post the other day about the things that most-frustrate travelers in airports. In general it was the lines, the waiting, the rush and bustle, security and ensuring you get to your gate on time. In general, it was that passengers feel “rushed” through an airport experience, or stuck at an airport, but never something in-between. This was interesting to read, I’ve shared some of the same thoughts and frustrations from time to time… but the more you travel the more (less?) you expect these types of minor inconveniences. Security isn’t fun (and isn’t fruitful, but we’ll leave the political discussion aside here), airports aren’t the best, and things like limited seating mean you’re typically a bit closer to the throng of humanity that normal. This is true throughout a great deal of the world and even in some of the best airports in the US. The question in these circumstances, I suppose, is if there is a way to find enjoyment in the overall experience.
Right now, as an example, I’m extremely early for my flights. I suppose anyone who reads this blog normally won’t be surprised by that. Two hours? That’s a minimum, I plan to never come close to missing another flight in my life. As a somewhat consistent traveler at this point, I will willingly acknowledge the trade-off I’m making… the earlier I’m here the more I wait, but the more time I have for waiting the less rushed the entire experience feels.
Long lines at security? This is still a frustration, but when you have two hours before your flight you approach this type of thing differently than if you have mere moments. By the same token, heading into a terminal with an hour to kill opens opportunities for dinner, maybe a book or a leisurely stroll through a chocolate shop. I don’t even really like shopping, but this type of thing is more open-ended. Once you’re at the airport, you can relax, let go, people watch (my favorite), and start making assumptions about the people around you.
Right now I’m sitting in a general seating area on top of Terminal B in Denver, Colorado. I’m enjoying a mint mocha from Caribou Coffee, and killing the near-hour before my flight boards by keeping an eye on the interactions around me. To my right is a mother who is working to corral a group of kids into heading to their gate… running out of time eating a quick bite and leaving a mess on the table when they were done. I’m not sure where they were headed, but it looked like potentially not only family but friends also in the group… a school trip maybe? To my left, a man and woman who have been here longer than I have. They’re having a casual conversation while looking around just like I am. The food varies, the people vary even more, but the experience is always the same and it’s the reason I love airports. Everyone is going somewhere, everyone has a story. You can ask, if you want to… most people will tell you, but sometimes the curiosity is the best. Where, if not here, will they end up today? Airports are a world of possibility, and there is hardly any place on this Earth that’s off-limits.
I wonder about some of the younger children that are here, flying with parents to far-away destinations. Growing up with the internet, they see the world as a much smaller place than even I did (though I mostly had the Internet too). I read about travel and my wanderlust grew from fiction mostly, from facts in magazines, and from pictures in National Geographic… does this next generation have the same? Is the world getting smaller a good thing for travelers, or a bad one? Are there people out there who would select to watch a documentary about Bhutan, rather than travel there themselves… and if so would they have had the spark to travel if the documentary didn’t exist? The world has sure changed… I can only hope for the positive.
The young people I know these days (wow that makes me sound old. Jen, never read this or pretend you didn’t see this line.) travel a great deal. I see children of friends making their way in the world to the far corners much like I am, and I encourage travel to everyone that will listen. It seems like access to information is making travel easier, accessible, removing barriers. A work acquaintance recently told me that she had learned that one additional website click will decrease readership on a news article somewhere in the range of 50% (pages, not advertisements), and removing these barriers were something she constantly considered when building digital content. Owning this blog myself, this was something that struck close to home… but at the same time it makes me wonder just how much future generations will lose interest for something so simple as another click or two.
Apply this to airports, and it’s a wonder that anyone travels at all. I’ve heard it called a necessary evil, and many worse things, but I wonder how prevalent travel would be if we started focusing on eliminating barriers. I heard in a television show lately that “You can tell a traveler by the smell of wind in their soul”, and while sure it’s television and sure I’m romanticizing the idea (and downplaying the deliberate barriers) I couldn’t help but think of how true it is. Meeting people who travel (think of any friend that has been in over ten countries, and you’ll know what I mean) is so rare for me these days that it sparks a kindred feeling I can’t really explain. There’s a bond there, there’s excitement, there’s a shared love of getting lost and finding more than you ever thought you would… and the fact that you’re both doing it together. You don’t have to know them, you don’t have to travel with them… in a sense you already have, and you already are… and there is so much further to go. I hope that travel becomes more and more accessible, and I love the idea of technologies aimed at making it easier and easier to get from A to B… I just hope we focus on what it enables and not what it takes away.
This blog post has been all over, I think I’ll have to clean this up a bit more before committing it to “print”, but I also want to mention here the odd inequities you find in ones’ life when they do not travel. I was speaking recently with a colleague and mentioning that there need to be global considerations when discussing local expenditures. Yes, I’m being a bit vague here on purpose, but suffice it to say someone bought something expensive and we took a step akin to advertising it across our business globally. I cautioned against doing this again, we’re a global company and there are areas all over the world where the amount we’re discussing is nothing less than a few months of income… and it may not be an appropriate way to present ourselves to the world. You can call me over-sensitive if you want (Heck, I run a blog full of odd and expensive vacations, call me a hypocrite while you do it… but this life and my work life do not overlap or get advertised inside of one another.), but to me it seemed like we were advertising the fact that our local team could burn money on toys to the tune of what translates to months and months of hard work in impoverished areas in the world.
The response I received from my coworker was one of complete denial, a blanket-statement about our company policies and pay-rates, and the courageous, but completely inaccurate statement that people all over the world… while enabled by my company… all were paid appropriately and had the same money. My colleague went on to say that locals in every country would approach income the same way, and they were adamant that this type of frivolity came with our level of compensation in general regardless of local.
I haven’t been caught quite so off-guard in a while, and I ended up declining to pursue the conversation because the comment went so far beyond ignorance that it almost felt like denial. I wanted to encourage this person to travel, I wanted to preach about the poverty that one can find in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, in Johannesburg, South Africa, on in Delhi/Agra/Bangalore, India.
I don’t mean to pick on India here, poverty is an international concern and one that knows no race, nationality, or border… and I wanted to share all of these experiences and challenges with this person and make them see… but… it’s one thing to hear it and another thing to understand it. It’s one thing to learn of poverty, and another thing entirely to witness what it can mean to a person, a family, an entire culture. This person isn’t ready, and since then I have confirmed they have never traveled and left the creature comforts of the United States. It’s not that those who travel are better, I’ll admit I have yet to “spend time among the people” in most circumstances, but those who look, learn, develop, and grow from experiencing other cultures are. They’re not better people, they’re deeper people. It’s how the wind enters your soul in the first place.
