I need to write every day and I know it, I need to meditate every day and I know it, I need to work out every day and I know it. And still, it doesn’t happen. Strange. Mysterious. Maybe common?
Yesterday, we got Silke home from Vietnam, after having made it through a whole month without her. We said goodbye to her on the seventh of August in London and picked her up in Copenhagen on the sixth of September. A child who has never been away from home for more than a day, except that she doesn’t live anywhere. Meaning a child who has never been away from her parents for more than a day. It was wild for all of us.
With our usual delayed precision, we drove to the airport at the last minute to do what I believe is an international tradition: to be there when the plane lands, to stand and wait right there, where you walk through the one-way door out of the secured area to those who are waiting. Just wait and stare and wait for an hour maybe. It doesn’t matter. It is about love. And that matters. A lot. 
Silke’s boyfriend is British and has to go through a stricter passport control without an EU passport (we’re not fans of Brexit), and we waited a long time. But that’s okay. It was lovely. A beautiful hour of love, culminating in kisses and hugs and tears in a truly wonderful way.
And we learned something. On the way to the airport, it dawned on us how important it was to have a flag. So important that a few of the precious minutes we had could be spared for a stop to buy flags. You bring flags to the airport when you pick someone up. That’s how it is.
There are flags for birthdays, flags for confirmations, exams, Christmas and New Year, when you get married, when children are born. The flag doesn’t celebrate the nation, it has nothing to do with that. The flag symbolizes celebration itself. I think it’s different from most other countries in the world, that the flag plays such a central role in communicating that something is important and worth celebrating.
So there we stood. With our Danish flag and waited and waited. It’s a beautiful scene in Love Actually, the airport scene, and it was a beautiful scene in Copenhagen Airport: people who love each other, waiting for each other, having missed each other, being reunited. For a whole hour we stood there waiting for it to be our turn. Talking about how this waiting too is a part of love, how standing there with your eyes glued to the doors and seeing all sorts of people who are NOT the ones you’re waiting for come through and reach out eyes, hearts and arms toward someone who is waiting, is beautiful, builds up, is an experience of being someone who loves. And at the same time, an experience that this is exactly what is human, what is shared, what we are, what we are here for.
Peace and love.
Truly.
That’s what we need.
And not much else.
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