My Interminable Affair with Terminal 3.

Every morning, before work, I would travel to T3 for breakfast. I love the ambience there. It is great for meditation. The airport terminals are never boring or routine. I love the space there too. It is huge like a medieval cathedral with ceiling that reaches to the sky. The lingering and rushing crowd also attracts me. They are actually the icing on my meditative cake. If you pay attention, the beauty of drama is delicately played out.

You will
 witness joy and relief as people are leaving for a vacation. But such joy is also subtly layered. Appearances can be deceiving. You have those who are sulking before the vacation. Others look jaded, even peeved. Some would appear listless like they're serving time. The suppression of excitement is I suspect deliberate.

Somehow there is this unspoken belief that one should not be too happy. I guess they believe that too much joy is unrealistic (or "sway" - bad luck?). Because the joy bubble is fragile and
 after the holiday fun is the workplace dread, they choose rather to dampen it. This would cushion the effect to ready them for the eventual hangover. And the hangover would surely come.

So, going for holidays for some is like running a reverse race where instead of looking forward to the end, most are craving for a restart when the end draws near. These are the people who take a measured, cautious approach to life. They don't believe in being too happy because the higher you go, the harder you fall – so to speak.

I for one am
 pigeonholed into such a category. I once believed that you can be too happy but never too sad. And there is something deeply wrong about being too happy but not too sad. I sadly find my security and identity blanket in being perpetually morose. I still do, sometimes. My wife can testify to it. But I am a recovering grouchy-aholic. And recovering from that, I now believe that there is some happiness in sadness and some sadness in happiness; a tincture of one in the other. And one cannot do without the other. In other words, they are not mutually exclusive. 

So, when I am on a getaway holiday with my loved ones, I would tell myself that I am not running away from sadness. Or, when I am returning from a holiday, I am not bidding farewell to happiness. If anything, I am bringing them with me, that is, that wondrous pair, happiness and sadness. They usually travel light without the usual emotional baggage. And together, they make my holidays even more profoundly enjoyable; some sort of like a
 bittersweet experience of the most uplifting kind.

This way, I am always reminded of the gladness and blessings in my trips as well as the hopes and humbleness in my life, wherever I may be. By recovering from both extremes, that is, being too happy or too sad (and each time relishing in one or wallowing in the other exclusively), I am always perched on higher ground where I am able to see the whole landscape of my life, that is, how the rough terrain ahead merges seamlessly with the oasis of rest in an expertly choreographed intertwining dance, 
each taking their artful turn to move me forward and not allow me to commiserate in one desiccated dead-end of time.

But alas, I have digressed. That is what the meditative lure of the airport terminal does to me. Like gentle, odyssey-like waves, they carry my thoughts away, unhinged and untethered. And I get lost in time.

I am now leaving my beloved muse. Till we meet again T3, which is possibly tomorrow morning (at least for as long as the school holidays last), I will miss you. Hugs and kisses. Cheerz.