It was a rainy Friday morning. The kind that leaves you in a trance, stuck interminably between slumber and alertness.
But my spell was broken once I stepped into the terminal at Chicago O’Hare Airport.
The pitter-patter of raindrops landing in the darkness was washed away by the rush of a thousand people heading in diverging directions.
This scene was a bit much for me. All around me, people were getting on with their day. Yet, I hadn’t even had my morning coffee yet.
I set out to rectify this situation immediately. But as I made my way to one of the many coffee shops on the concourse, I couldn’t help but think how inorganic this whole situation was.
The scene in this airport concourse didn’t have to exist. The organized chaos was only a thing because a mass of people desired to crisscross the country at warp speed — and because the airlines routed so many of those journeys through Chicago.
This desire was the key to the whole operation. It kept the lights on, the coffee shops open, and the concourses full. It led a small army of gate agents, security officers, and shuttle bus drivers to percolate at an hour when so many in the nearby metropolis were still in bed. It made this random bit of turf in Illinois appear to be anything but.
Yes, at this moment, O’Hare Airport seemed all-important — a bustling transit hub and the crossroads of the skies. But it was just a prominent outpost of a manufactured ecosystem.
As I stood in line, waiting for my coffee, I thought back to a scene from roughly 60 hours earlier.
I had just gotten off an airplane at Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport, a mere 73 miles north of O’Hare. But the contrasts couldn’t have been starker.
The sun hadn’t quite set on Southeastern Wisconsin on this late afternoon. But the airport was a ghost town. The gate areas were full of empty seats. The restaurants in the concourse were all shut down for the night.
I made the long walk to baggage claim, arriving at the same time as my suitcase. A few hundred steps away, the keys to my rental car were waiting for me.
No, there was no crush of people to navigate on this midweek evening. I made my way through the arrival process feeling like a VIP, mostly because I was about the only person in the airport.
In Chicago, on the other hand, I was a cog in a wheel.
My bag was just one of many for the airport staff to process and load onto a litany of planes. I checked a baggage tracking app on my phone with nervous anticipation, hoping my luggage would find its way to the cargo hold of the plane. With minutes to spare, it did.
And while the coffee shops in O’Hare might have been open, I wasn’t exactly feeling the warm aura of hospitality there. The staff was overwhelmed, determined to get people their food and beverage as quickly as possible. Curtness ruled the day. Anything more was a waste of time.
All of this made me wonder why I put myself through such torture. It left me to ponder why I would willingly dive into the teeth of this manufactured ecosystem.
It certainly wasn’t a necessity. The recent pandemic — which gutted air travel for months — made that abundantly clear.
No, it was something else. Namely, a willingness to put myself through the ringer in pursuit of something worthwhile.
Oftentimes, that meant leisure travel or a chance to visit family. This time, the impetus was a business trip.
In any case, the juice was worth the squeeze. It was worth it for me, and for so many others in that coffee shop line that morning.
As I write this, we find ourselves in a fascinating moment.
We are emerging from the depths of a remarkable event — a prolonged shutdown of our economy and social scene. Habits have been broken. Norms have been shattered. Life as we once knew it is over.
In the wake of this disruption, many of us have the urge to make a clean break. To do away with the manufactured ecosystems we now recognize we don’t need.
We also have a desire to avoid the uncomfortable. To “live our best lives” and avoid the unpleasant experience we once put ourselves through.
All of this is tantalizing. After all, if we can clear the decks, we’ll spend our energy more productively. We’ll waste less time maintaining nonsensical habits for tradition’s sake and spend more time exploring our true potential.
That’s the theory. But it’s rarely that simple in reality.
Indeed, we didn’t build such ecosystems on a whim. The structures we now ridicule once served an essential purpose. Many still do.
We can’t just toss these aside wholesale and call it progress. Or at least we shouldn’t.
Such is the conundrum facing the airline industry. The act of flying — of elbowing our way through crowded airport concourses to jockey for legroom in a sterile metal tube — that was no one’s idea of fun. And so, when the opportunity arose to return to it, we punted.
But we soon found there was no viable alternative. Exotic Zoom backgrounds couldn’t masquerade for the real thing. Long-distance road trips were just too impractical.
So, we reluctantly returned to the manufactured ecosystem of air travel. An ecosystem still smarting from our collective abandonment.
The results have been decidedly mixed so far. Staffing shortages and weather issues have led to a spate of cancellations. Food options and amenities within airports have remained scarce as the pandemic’s shadow lingers.
But there seems to be a sense of buy-in. We’ve rekindled our commitment to the skies, understanding that a morning navigating a busy airport is but a small price to pay.
There are surely other ecosystems like this. Structures that we’ve been tempted to leave for dead, but that might still suit us well.
It’s our responsibility to recognize this. And it’s our responsibility to build them back up.
For what we’ve created might not be pleasant. But it’s certainly worth keeping.