I am writing at this moment in a large airport. Thousands of people work at jobs associated with this airport, and few of the jobs actually befit a human being.
I traveled to the airport in a hotel shuttle. On the way I told the driver, a Peruvian immigrant, about the talk I had given this weekend and about my vision of a more beautiful world, and at one point, by way of illustration, I said, “Here you are driving back and forth to the airport all day—surely you must have moments when you think, ‘I was not put here on earth to do this.’”
“Yeah, that’s for sure,” he said.
I can’t help but think the same as I watch the cashier at the airport kiosk, typing in purchase items and handing out change and saying, “Thank you sir, have a nice day,” and the man going from trash can to trash can, emptying them into his cart and changing the plastic bag, silent and sullen, wooden-faced. What kind of world have we created, that a human being spends all day doing such tasks? What have we become, that we ar