Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Airports, America, Emotion, Empathy, Human Goodness, Humanity, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance
Despite being a sentimental bastard, I’ve always looked forwards.
I love the possibilities of what is ahead of us.
The new. The unknown. The what-if-we-could-do-this sort of stuff.
But when I was in NYC, I came face-to-face with a few things from the past that reminded me how their impact on me remains in the present.
I’ll be writing about a few of these over the next few weeks but the first was this …
Yep, a bank of payphone at JFK.
In a smartphone driven world, I have no idea why they’ve left so many of them there – but even accepting some people must choose to use a payphone over a mobile device, there was something lovely about seeing them all sat there.
A reminder of a time where the darkest corridors in the oldest airports were possibly where the most pure expressions of humanness could be experienced
People queuing up to talk to loved ones … friends … colleagues … or companies.
A rollercoaster of conversational emotions …
Happiness, Sadness. Curiosity. Despair. Hope. Calmness. Longing. Love.
Every payphone, a different story …
Each one interpreted by the voice, words and mannerisms of the person in front of you.
So even though airports send and bring millions of people to every corner of the globe each and every year, that row of payphones reminded me how rarely we now glimpse others lives in their raw and unfiltered state.
Social media certainly isn’t that.
In fact, I can’t think of many current situations where we witness masses of people all crammed into the same space, trying to live and deal with their individual lives in public.
Maybe that’s a good thing, but for all the convenience and freedom that tech gives us, this bank of payphones made me think that maybe the cost of this convenience is our ability to empathize and relate to the realities each of us lives in the shadows.