Gigantic Binoculars at the Airport

I like to get to the airport waaaaaay early when I fly. 

Stupid early. Like I feel like I’m running late if I skate in at the 2-hours-before-your-flight-departs recommended time early.

Maybe it’s because I’m often flying with thousands of dollars in camera gear and I want plenty of time to inevitably pull every single lens and memory card out for TSA’s most thorough appraisal ever. 

Or maybe it’s the obnoxiously smug sense of superiority I get when I hear people in the long security line melt down because they weren’t expecting this line and their flight leaves in 20 minutes!!! Ahhhhh! (I admit that neither smugness nor superiority are praiseworthy emotions, but there it is…)

But the truth is, I think it’s most likely due to how very much I loooooove airport people watching. I do. I LOVE it.

I like to arrive early, grab a latte, and find somewhere to settle in and look busy while actually surreptitiously watching everything that’s going on around me. It’s fantastic.

Recently, while pretending to be oh-so-focused on the computer screen in front of me, I watched the couple across the aisle from me- it was airport GOLD.

I was sitting with my back to the window, so this couple (maybe in their mid-sixties? I’m not great at guessing ages, but they were talking about visiting their daughter and her family, so grandparents…) were facing it. The man had coke-bottle thick glasses on and the most enormous pair of birding binoculars I’ve ever seen around his neck.

Every few minutes, he’d lift the binoculars to his glasses and exclaim over the planes coming and going from the runway. All the while, his wife was talking about their daughter and the plans they were making.

And when she felt like he was more enamored of the planes than her words, she would lean in and repeatedly poke him in the chest with her finger, very slowly and calmly yelling, “PAY! ATTENTION! PAY! ATTENTION!” at which point, he would lower the binoculars and turn his gaze blankly to her and seem for a minute or two like he was listening before once again being distracted by the planes and his gigantic binoculars.

This was their pattern for the full hour plus that I sat across from them. It was AWESOME.

And, ever since that day, I carry that woman’s voice in my head- “PAY! ATTENTION! PAY! ATTENTION!”

I hear her when I realize I’ve been staring at my phone for an eternity. Or when I’m annoyed at waiting in line at the grocery store. Or when I have that weird sense of restless discontent that makes me all fidgety and irritable for no good reason whatsoever. 

I hear her voice and I start looking around me…really looking.

It’s never failed me yet.

Yesterday, it meant that I overheard the woman in the checkout lane next to me at the grocery buy 3 of the “Harvest Bags” (you know what I’m talking about? Where you can buy a $10 “bag” that gets filled with certain groceries for a hungry family?) and say quietly, “It’s a terrible thing to be hungry.” Her empathy and compassion have stayed with me ever since.

It meant that when I was walking our insane dog around the neighborhood a few nights ago, I saw a family pull into their driveway and one of the kids jump out of the car and plug in their Christmas lights and then stare up at them smiling with total joy. I spent the rest of the walk so enjoying the glow of trees and lights and all of the twinkling decorations bringing such warmth and magic to these long chilly nights.

It often means that I get more out of my day-to-day life than I would otherwise. My coffee, steaming as it’s cupped in my hands, feels like such a treat. My dog sleeping upside down makes me laugh out loud. The light slanting across the afternoon sky, turning it a soft pink, reminds me of the tremendous beauty in the world.

We are in the last 2 weeks of this year. It’s hectic. It’s emotional. Things do not always go to plan. This is not where you’d imagined you’d be or how you’d feel or what you want. It happens.

But take the unintended advice of a frazzled woman in an airport and “PAY! ATTENTION!”- you may find that there are some slices of space and peace and joy and beauty tucked in around the craziness.  

The world is not a perfect place. There is injustice and suffering all around us. I’m not minimizing that. Let’s pay attention to those things as well as we move through our lives.

But we have more to give and can access more of our compassion and more of our energy when we have filled our well with the good around us, the beauty and the love and the magic. 

Look for it. Create it. Notice it. Let it in.