Traveling Restriction-Free: My Experience

It has been a very long, strange journey through this COVID 19 season of our lives. There have been many points of view as we entered, struggled and endured the past couple of years! My last flight prior to the big break in normalcy was the first weekend of March 2020. Since that time, we’ve all worn masks in one way or another (hahaha) for flights until very recently.

This past week, I traveled for the first time since 2020 restriction-free. I walked into the airport without a mask on and I felt like I was breaking all of the rules, too. That was until I looked around and saw that almost no one else was wearing one either. I went through my TSA PreCheck and didn’t have to lower my mask. I also still didn’t have to scan or show my boarding pass. That, as a side note, is something I really thought would come back but maybe technology has come so far that we don’t need to do that except at the gate now.

Things I noticed were people making a bit more eye contact and smiling at each other. I know I often smiled under my mask at people and then laughed at myself. “Why bother silly,” I’d think to myself but would then reassure myself that hopefully they noticed my smiling eyes. Under my glasses I guess I don’t even know if that is true, but in my heart, it was nice to see actual smiles on peoples’ faces. It was also much easier to communicate with others, but maybe that’s me and my older hearing showing a deficit.

I certainly did still see people wearing a mask, and on one of my connections I did get one out because it was a very close flight, and I had some elderly people around me. I don’t know, I just thought it was a good idea, not so much for me but for others.

I’m traveling internationally this coming week and am curious to see how all of that will go and what restrictions might still exist. I don’t think I’ll ever completely get rid of masks now; I still think there are times and places that it reduces my anxiety, but for the most part I am very happy to be able to make that decision for myself.

What are your thoughts?