Neither air traffic nor holidays depend on us. They are great facts in the face of which one can only feel the insignificance of one’s own existence.
Both ladies spoke about migrants, to put it mildly, very reluctantly: that they are freeloaders, that they come from nowhere, just reach out, want to get married to get a green card. They were both advocates of tightly closing the borders and that neither Italy nor the US should accept any “those”, because who knows what kind of people they are, what diseases they carry, a person will not feel safe in their own bed, my God! And it is not true that they are fleeing some war, they are looking for a better life, these young men and women. It was a good thing that there was some space on the metal bench next to me, because my colossal cognitive dissonance set in there.
With each passing moment, I felt a growing desire to ask the ladies about their own stories: how and why did they leave Poland 20-30 years ago? Were they running away from something or did they just want to live in the colorful West? What were their beginnings like? Where did they work? Did they speak the languages of the countries they came to well? Perhaps I could not restrain myself, but when the ladies – increasingly friendly – smoothly moved from migrants to the gender ideology that is widespread in kindergartens (“the kid says he is a boy, and the lady asks if he is sure, and gives him a dress to wear he put on for a test), I decided that I had learned enough and changed the bench. There was an air of resignation among those waiting for the plane to be delayed. No one made much noise or waved their hussar wings. Maybe this is how, after some time stuck in free time, a person falls into some kind of internal resignation resulting from the feeling of having no influence over anything.
After all, neither air traffic nor vacations depend on us. They are great facts in the face of which one can only feel the insignificance of one’s own existence. I finally arrived, resigned to the fact that the airport rental desk was already closed and the precise vacation plan collapsed like a house of cards. They say that if you want to make God laugh, you have to tell him about your plans. Other versions talk about “tempting fate.” We do this all the time, striving to give ourselves the illusion of being in control of our lives. And in this sense, traveling really educates. Because it is total nonsense. The same as the short memory of the ladies whose conversation I overheard in Okęcie. One might naively think that if you have received something good, you need to share it even more, instead of jealously guarding it from those who, like me, like everyone else, are looking for a place in this increasingly difficult world.
