Distance.

I love airports! Everything about them excite me... the duty-free shopping, the very agent-like fingerprint swiping, the X-ray machines, lots of people, those awesome trolley things that carry your bags, the cafes, and of course the travelling!

There is also something emotional always attached to airports for me. Any time I've travelled overseas I've visited my family in Canada, and so every trip has meant either anticipation or sadness (though I generally hold on to the former more as you can see in the intro of this post). And airports are full of these emotions. Picking up my Nonna from the airport the other day, I realised how many people are so affected by distance, with a front-row seat to a number of emotional reunions.

There are always two sides to a story, and for travel they are very large sides. The idea that we can travel to places on the other side of the world and discover cultures we've only seen in movies is extraordinary. Experiences like these are priceless and the knowledge we gain is for life.

However, the other side is the people we miss. Distance is okay if it's temporary, but when you have your family split between two countries, or a loved one fighting overseas, or your partner living across the world, it becomes difficult.

As I wrote in my English Paper 2 essay, "although there is a yearning for physical presence between two separated people, there is always an emotional connection that remains." So as long as distance only separates us physically, and there is something deeper than that that holds us together, distance is okay... well, temporarily.