I was sitting in the airport terminal, waiting for a flight to absolutely nowhere of any consequence, when it hit me like a misplaced luggage trolley to the shins: no one talks anymore. Look around any departure lounge today, and it’s like staring into a digital graveyard. Heads bowed, faces lit by the cold glow of screens, and fingers tap-tap-tapping away as though the key to human enlightenment lies somewhere in a group chat.
The bitter irony, of course, would have made Socrates weep into his toga: We live in the most connected age in human history. Phones that are smarter than most governments, instant messaging, video calls, emojis, GIFs, memes—you name it—and yet no one will even make eye contact with the person sitting six inches away. The art of conversation, that old joy of leaning over and saying, “Hey, what’s your story?” has been replaced by a dystopian silence punctuated only by the dull hum of charging cables. It’s not communication; it’s digital semaphore. And let me tell you, it’s depressing.
But then, as I sat there wallowing in my existential despair, I decided to test a theory. I turned to the guy sitting next to me—a man with the expression of someone who’s just discovered his flight had been delayed—and I said, “Crazy how no one talks anymore, isn’t it?” He looked up, startled at first, then cracked a grin. What followed was a surprisingly pleasant conversation about the weather, travel mishaps, and the joys of people-watching at Gate 14. Turns out, it only takes one person to break the silence.
So maybe the lesson here isn’t that we’ve forgotten how to communicate— it’s that we’re all just sitting here, waiting for someone else to make the first move. Like a bunch of lonely passengers staring at our phones, thinking that someone else will start the conversation. Maybe it’s time we all put down the screens and try to remember what it feels like to talk—the old-fashioned way. It might not solve the world’s problems, but at least we’ll have something to do while waiting for a flight to nowhere in particular.
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A Kings 
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