This may sound strange, but there are few places on earth more comfortable to me than an international airport.
Don't get me wrong--international flights themselves are a test of patience at their best, and a test of sanity at their worst, and jet-lag is debilitating. Neither of these get easier as I get older, either.
But the airports themselves are a place of peace. I don't mean peace in the sense of "...and quiet", but rather in the sense of the Hebrew word "Shalom". This is a peace borne of wholeness and harmony, of bustle and beauty.
I certainly didn't mind airports when I was in college, returning home for Thanksgiving or Christmas from Iowa to Washington by means of flights from Sioux Falls to Minneapolis (or Denver, or Salt Lake City) to Seattle, but it wasn't until I moved to Japan that I first recognized airports as places of peace.
On a personal level, when I moved to Japan in 2009, taking my first teaching position and putting down roots for the first time, my life changed. In Japan, some small part of me was always homesick for America, and yet when I would visit America, some small part of me was always homesick for Japan. Now after moving back to the US, the inverse holds true.
America was my home, and yet Japan also quickly became my home, too--these feelings are not mutually exclusive, though they are in tension. At the airport, it becomes easier to hold these realities in harmony with one another. I'll unpack that: Airports are liminal spaces, neither one place nor another, in a constant state of flux. Time loses its meaning--walls of clocks inform travelers of the times at various destinations around the world, but local time ceases being relevant once you pass through the security gates, except as an indication of when to board the plane. People from a rich array of other countries occupy the same space for a short while--to, from, betwixt, and between. Just sitting at the tables near the YVR Starbucks as I write this, I can hear at least three different languages being spoken around me, in addition to English. The faces and fashions are as kaleidoscopic as the passports being scanned at the gates. The duty free shop further signals that this is a space outside of place. And, like the ship of Theseus, it is constantly, and gradually changing. Between regular departures and arrivals, the exact configuration of individuals in the airport shifts one minute to the next, and will be entirely different in a matter of hours.
Stepping into a space such as this, neither fully here nor fully there, a place where fellow travelers from all across the globe meet while en-route, is ironically where I feel the most fully here and fully there at the same time. It is at the airport that I am reminded that I belong to both homes in the short-term, but ultimately to neither, and that my true home where I experience the fullest and richest belonging transcends time and place; where every tribe and tongue and nation will gather as one, road-weary travelers arriving home at long last.
For me, this is what the airport points towards.
Perhaps I am just looking for ways to make a long flight and days of jet-lag more palatable, but every time I pass through the airport, I like to think that I am sampling just the tiniest taste of heaven.
