The Atlanta Airport is an interesting place. On the one hand, I love it because it’s always transporting me to some fun place or other. But on the other, the place depresses me. Form follows function; the decorations, if you can call them that, are neutral and plain; everything is so cluttered that you feel cramped; and the seats are really uncomfortable – which isn’t good for people like me who show up to their gate an hour early as a rule.
However, as the title of this post alludes, you can still find joy in melancholy places.
Today, I was sitting at my gate, eating a fast food meal that will surely kill me, and I look over to my left. Sitting there, all alone, is a man. He is probably in his early 70s. And you know what he’s doing? He is just licking an ice cream cone. And while he isn’t exactly smiling, I can tell that he is extremely content with everything in the world.
He happens to be booked on a flight leaving through a gate that is providentially located right next to a Ben & Jerry’s. Naturally, he buys a double-scoop waffle cone in his favorite flavor. And he eats it. He may be all by himself, but this is the next best thing to company. Eating that ice cream cone, I’m sure he thinks of all those times he made home-made ice cream for his children back in the day, and how excited his grandkids get when he buys them any flavor they want at the ice cream store, just an hour before dinner. He probably chuckles to himself thinking about how many good pictures they have of ice cream all over their little faces.
It’s probably pretty weird that those are the thoughts that go through my mind when I see a man eating ice cream. But even if that’s not what he was thinking, it still made me happy to see an old man slowly eat an ice cream cone in the middle of the airport waiting on a delayed flight all by himself. Oh life.
The Thankfulness Project 
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