Leaving On A Jetplane
It’s early on a Friday morning. I’m at the airport, sitting in one of the bustling halls, waiting for my turn to board the flight that would take me to
Singapore for a business meeting.
Ahhh…airports hold such a sense of adventure and mystery doesn’t it? Each and every time I find myself in an airport, or on a plane, this rush of excitement surrounds me somehow. I can’t quite explain it. It makes me the child once again, as I look out the window in wonderment and watch as these huge mechanical birds swoop up and down the runway, carrying its passengers to wonderful, wonderful places all over the world.
In an airport, the world seems smaller all of a sudden. There are throngs of people around me, getting on with their own agendas, some in formal business suits with black leather suitcases, and others in their holiday attires looking all casual and relaxed. I find myself wondering…where are they from? What kind of lives do they live back where they came from? I’m envious somehow at the thought that some of these people were probably from the other side of the world, having their little tropical island vacation away from their frenzied life back home. Oh, if only I’d be allowed to be part of that dream! The idea of visiting different places in the world and experiencing different cultures and people of different races and beliefs thrills me to no end.
All of a sudden, I remember once again my plans to roam and taste the world that have been abandoned somehow due to my hectic schedule of working and writing and balancing everything that seems to be going on in my life at this moment. I find myself dreaming about walking down the streets of
Paris with the
Eiffel Tower at the background, looking dazzling against the night sky…or marveling at the existence of the Egyptian pyramids with the backdrop of the desert…or sniffing the very air in the
Hanging Gardens of
Babylon . Places that I have read about ever since I was a school girl in pigtails but have never chanced to visit. It is easy when you’re sitting in an airport, and all you have is a vivid imagination that takes you wherever you want to go.
No wonder people are advised to take a vacation every single time life gets too depressing or overpowering. This feeling of being able to escape the monotony of life and fly off to that distant place in time is indeed potent. It is rejuvenating somehow. It makes you realize the enormity of life beyond your own…the sheer size of everything that is going on from a global perspective. Suddenly, you feel that your own problems are not so big after all. And you ask yourself “Why did I feel as though I was suffocating and drowning all those times before? My problem is just dust compared to the problems in the world as a whole.” All at once, you see things from the bigger picture with crystal clarity and find the strength from within to move forward at full speed.
Sigh. The wonders of airports and airplanes. See how they get me to forget somehow that my destination is just Kiasu land an hour’s flight away? Damn that distressingly perfect voice of the lady announcing that we are to board the plane to
Singapore now. The perfect picture of Parisian skies vanished up in a smoke and I heave a sigh, bidding the beautiful reverie adieu till next time.
I do hope though, that I would never get old or cynical enough to feel the rush of excitement and the vibrancy of life the way I feel it now when I step into an airport in anticipation of the trip I would make. Hopefully, that inner child in me will survive despite the number of times I will find myself waiting in these halls years and years down the road. Sometimes, the simple little joys of imagination and hope are those that make life so much more worth living.
