The Love We Overlook

Around Valentines Day we check our love balance. The mind can't resist measuring the fullness or emptiness of the heart. Except for a few golden moments, the mind finds a love deficit. Our lives can be filled with loving people, but the mind persists in finding some lack. One day, I saw through all that. In an unexpected place, I saw that there's never a shortage of love.

My connecting flight was delayed. Stuck in the United Airlines O'Hare terminal, I took a seat at one end of one of the long glass and steel arcades framing the space. Instead of burying myself in a book or busying my mind with work, I simply gazed down the gallery. Through the light-filled space passengers hurried toward departure gates and sauntered from arrivals. As they moved across the black and white checkerboard floor their steps took on the qualities of an everyday ballet. Some unseen choreographer guided the intricate patterns of action. No passenger crashed into another. Each step beautifully expressed the individual character of the person moving across the floor. The structure of the terminal was integral to this dance. Each element of the exposed steel frame worked with the other elements to shape an arcing space that embraced and encouraged harmony of movement.

My attention was drawn passed the surface forms of people and architecture. It traveled through the physical forces animating the gestures of legs and arms. My consciousness penetrated the structural forces holding up the building. Then I saw it. What created, activated and harmonized this place was love. It held together and fostered the countless whirling atoms of the floor, walls and roof. Love brought together and nurtured the hearts, minds and bodies of every passenger anxiously racing to catch a flight. It didn't matter if anyone noticed. Love constantly, skillfully and wisely caressed every detail in endless supply.

A voice echoed through the space announcing the boarding of my flight. I entered the ballet and re-entered the mind-stream of hopes and fears, breakthroughs and frustrations. When I recall that layover, I notice the scene in front of me and see the overlooked force bringing it all together: Love.