I’m sitting in the airport in Seattle waiting for a flight. I love planes, watching them arrive and depart. Watching the general traffic of odd vehicles you only see at airports, special pickups with short cabs, sweepers, blades, all sorts of stuff.
But what you also see is a vast river of humanity. People going back and forth, all of them bent on going places and doing things. Some of them probably just boring flights for work, others are going on the trip of a lifetime.
And you see kids. Kids are so interesting. Because there’s nothing in the world that’s more important than whatever it is that they’re doing right now. The child in all of us lives in the now. The Right Now. So, I’m watching a woman with a couple of kids, one is probably on the short side of two, the other is maybe four. They’re fascinated by the planes, by the people, by the everything of it all. Mom asks if they want to eat lunch, neither one pays much attention but mom’s attention is taken up by the phone and finding food.
The one-year old has other plans. He hop skips along the window ledge (yes, inside) and with one foot on the carpet and one foot on the aluminum frame, he makes his way along the window. At the end he spies something fascinating. It’s tall, it’s shiny, it’s very seductive. He puts his arms up over it and pulls himself up to get a better look. He decides he needs to get the full experience and sticks out a tongue to taste it.
Yum. There it tastes like orange. And here its definitely ice cream. Maybe some soda pop in there. It’s a cornucopia of tastes.
And then mom ruins it by running over and saying, “Oh, no, honey. Don’t lick the garbage can!”
See? Perspective in action.