We live in a hotel lobby.
A place full of movement. People come and go. Some stay only for a moment, others sit together for hours in a corner and lose all sense of time. Suitcases roll across the floor, conversations blend with silence, somewhere an elevator door opens, outside a taxi is waiting. One person has just arrived, another has already disappeared again.
The Hotel Lobby as a Symbol of Life
The hotel lobby is a symbol of our life.
In a large hotel, people are constantly meeting one another. At the reception desk, a brief contact occurs — like at the supermarket checkout in everyday life. A glance, a sentence, a fleeting moment.
Other encounters go deeper. Two people sit together, talk for what seems like only a few hours, and yet it feels like an entire life shared together. Perhaps these three hours are symbolic of fifty years of marriage. Because time is not what we think it is. Time is perception. And perception is what makes reality truly real.
A Place of Transition
The lobby itself is never still. It is transition.
No one belongs there.
One person goes up to their room.
The next disappears into the wellness area.
Someone else has just driven away.
People briefly appear in the visible world and then disappear again into the invisible.
How We Move Through Life
And this is how we move through life, too.
We meet people, lose sight of them again, encounter new faces, have conversations, build closeness, and experience farewells. Everything seems to be constantly changing. Nothing truly stands still.
And yet there are these special moments in which everything suddenly feels real.
A conscious moment.
A focus.
A true perception.
Like at the reception desk, when you say:
“Now it is my turn. Now I am booking my room.”
This moment of presence makes everything real.
The Great Question of Life
Perhaps this is exactly the great question of our life:
Why do we keep walking through this hotel lobby?
Why do we remain in this endless coming and going, in encounters that appear and disappear?
Why do we search for happiness in movement, when perhaps we have long had the possibility of arriving somewhere?
To find a home.
A place of true connection.
Not only encounter, but permanence.
Not only appearance, but being.
The True Longing
Perhaps the true longing of the human being is not to keep meeting new people in the lobby.
But at some point, to stop searching.
And to arrive.