Airports are purgatory. Millions of people, scuttling, rushing, biding, and fuming. It's society in microcosm.
Looking around, it occurs to me that people are doing everything possible to not be here. They're speaking to ghosts, hundreds of miles away, while checking the weather, the news, reliving the past and worrying about the future. Occasionally, a face shines out of the gloom, fully present and radiating curiosity and warmth. No one seems to catch their glance, or if they do, their eyes shift away afraid they might be selling something.
Recently the term, 'tethering' has entered the tech lexicon. You can 'tether' your laptop to your phone, to use 3g or 4g internet connectivity. It's great fun in the wifi wasteland of the modern airport, but it also speaks to a spiritual dimension of our society. We tether ourselves to our understanding of reality. We feel grounded, but that tether keeps us down. We no longer look for compassion, depth, truth, anything at all, save the next distraction; the next fix on our fantastical road away from suffering. We're walking in circles, tethered to, what passes, as our truth.
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