Think

Ever go to a major metropolitan airport and just sit and look?

Try it sometime.

You will see more people passing by than you could ever guess or comprehend. And that’s just your little portion of the world in your small time-frame that you sat there watching. The vastness of the planet and the absolutely frightening expansion of its populace is too broad and complex for 1 person to take in. Where do they all come from, and where are they going? Business men and women, decked out in their power suits of both gender; tourists happily arriving or sadly leaving; the mentally lost and hopeless; the young soldier wearing his uniform home for the first time, pride and a sense of his place firmly etched on his face; others from foreign lands, trying in vain to make sense of the signage that may as well be written in Martian.

You can see it all here in the airport, a place that has taken center-stage in recent decades for all the wrong reasons. So now as you sit and people-watch, you can see the travelers going through the various stages of checks and re-checks. If you maintain your quietness and open your ears, you can hear their complaints as they pass by your position on the chair. They don’t like being inspected and queried, and according to many of them, they’re flabbergasted to even be thought of as a terrorist. To some, the asking of a few questions and checking the bottoms of their shoes is akin to the rubber-hose treatment at a 1950’s backwoods police station. “Do I look like a terrorist?” is the most common statement. “I don’t look Middle Eastern, do I?”

Here’s a helpful tip for Mr. Put-off: If and when another attack comes through our airport system, those perpetrators won’t look Middle Eastern either. That gig is up and has been done, and we’re not dealing with a stupid enemy, just a crazy and determined one. They won’t look or act the same next time around.

Sooner or later you’ll probably see a lost or temporarily misplaced child, fodder to those who think the right to breed should be something licensed, like the right to drive or fish. We’re sorry Mr. & Mrs. Jones, but we have evidence that you’re both so stupid you would actually lose track of any future offspring at the airport in Chicago while headed out to your Disney vacation, and based upon that information, we cannot let you procreate.

As you watch the parents finally and frantically reunite with their 4 year old, scolding the child for what is obviously inattentiveness on their part, the people keep strolling by in wave after wave of humanity. Keep watching the people as they move by your spot. Play little games with yourself. Evaluate them on several 10 scales…appearance, demeanor, attitude, how intelligent/non-intelligent they look, and fashion sense. Make assessments of each of them in your head. Anyone look suspicious to you, or is everyone pretty much the same?

Try and count as many as you can in 1 minute…multiply that by 1440 (the number of minutes in a day)…and then try and imagine again how many people are in the airport right then…stretch that out to how many are in the city…then the state…then the country…and finally the world.

Too damn many, huh?

Now think if you will, of the monumental task of trying to protect the entire world against harm…of trying to educate everyone on the planet to be observant of their surroundings…think about trying to convince the mom who lost control of her own flesh and blood in the crowded terminal that she needs to be more fastidious in watching out for total strangers when she can’t even watch out for her own kid. Think about a task that is so overwhelming it becomes apparent in short order the phrase “nothing is impossible” might actually be incorrect. Some things are impossible, or nearly so.

And as you sit there eating your soft pretzel, think of how easily it would be for any one person to cause harm and suffering on a large scale. Someone completely out of the blue with a grudge to settle or an ax to grind could pull off a big moment in history with relative ease. Someone that was on no one’s radar screen, met none of the stereotypes and profiles, and looked kind of like everyone else in the room.

Have you thought about it? You have?

Ok. The next time you read something…see something on the television ….or hear something on the radio about how the United States failed and that’s why 9-11 happened…

Weigh what you heard about the failures with the facts that you have gathered in your day at the airport, simply observing, thinking, and doing a little mathematics.

Peace.