Air travel could be a hassle when one considers the haulage of miles and hours to get to a particular destination, but could you do it any better through other means? Air travel seems to be the fastest we have so far in this time and age,( super sonic space shuttles and the likes excluded).
Once at your destination, the troubles are thrown away until one sights the port of ones initial entry again for your upcoming departure.
I had never set eyes on the Pacific until this day, i also remember that before the plane landed in Honolulu, i had already google searched, did a little research on who Daniel k. Inouye was. I had seen the name of the airport when i purchased the ticket a few weeks back and probably on one of the screens at the airport of departure. I mean i just wanted to know who is and why was this quite busy tourism airport named after him? Who was he to the people of Honolulu, the island of Oahu, and most especially the entirety of Hawaii. That would make sense right?...a first timer visiting a City/Country googling names of structures, places to visit, things to do, street names e.t.c to get an understanding.
Hawaii probably being the most isolated population centre in the world; as the Californian coast is about 2,400 miles away; while Japan is more than 4,000 miles away; one better have a knowledge base before headed that direction.
As I walked through the airport, I had this instinctive feeling that not only was I being welcomed by the walls of the building, but I somehow felt i had already nailed down a connection to the people of the island.
Several conversations here and there would prove that, as i ended each conversation with "aloha", exposing my internal subconscious adrenaline.
It clicked! This unfound familiarity came from the fact that i had been reading, researching and drawing up conclusions before this very trip. Same as i had done for several other airports that are named after personalities and have opened their gates to my entry e.g Princess Juliana airport on the island of St.Martin, O.R Tambo in Johannesburg, S.A, Charles de Gaulle in Paris, France to mention a few. That internal confidence and self assurance that flows on arrival to your new destination cannot be explained nor skipped.
It clicked! This unfound familiarity came from the fact that i had been reading, researching and drawing up conclusions before this very trip. Same as i had done for several other airports that are named after personalities and have opened their gates to my entry e.g Princess Juliana airport on the island of St.Martin, O.R Tambo in Johannesburg, S.A, Charles de Gaulle in Paris, France to mention a few. That internal confidence and self assurance that flows on arrival to your new destination cannot be explained nor skipped.
Did you know that the Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta is actually named after two past Mayors of the city? I'm sure many have thought that the names are of one entity.
Imagine if you knew the names of the entry ports in several states in the U.S or in the Country you live in, then correlated this info, state to state.. 
Now envisage the knowledge, the info!!
Here is to say let us imbibe the google search mentality, learn relationships, the ask questions mentality in our everyday lives, and also teach our children to do so...
Imagine we took a minute or two to do a little research on the names of buildings we step into everyday, why they were named after the individuals e.t.c they don't have to be monumental structures; i mean buildings as little as your community library in your county zip code. That's knowledge! Therefore that is power.
Here's another one; seated there on the campus of the University of Mississippi (my alma mater) were several structures named after different personalities. I now look back, wishing i had done my research back then to know that some of the buildings on campus were undeniably named after slave owners, some actually because of their impacts on the said Campus through slavery. Take for example, Vardaman Hall is being renamed today, after much opposition as it was named after James Vardaman, a former Mississippi Governor who advocated lynching and adamantly opposed providing education to African-Americans. I never knew this my years on that Campus and my sacred hours in that building.
Let us be inquisitive about our environment, ask questions, read and travel; the answers we can get from these little searches can go a long way in telling us about where we are today, what it took to get here and of course where we are headed.
☆Jubril Blaize☆
May 2018
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