Saturday’s commute was…exciting. The train was pretty crowded, and as I got ready to get comfortable (can one really get comfortable on the subway?) in one of a couple of available seats, this girl across the aisle called out, “Uhh, don’t sit there!” She proceeded to point out a disgusting puddle of spit that I had nearly sat in, and another in an open seat next to her. She told me, and everyone else in earshot, that some guy had just walked down the aisle and spit on those seats…ewww. The heartening thing about this is that she took it upon herself to warn us, and that in so doing, she created a little bond among those of us there. “Nasty!,” we all commiserated. “Who does that?!?!”
Standing there, giving my thanks to Daisha (I asked the girl who had warned me her name so that I could include her here! Daisha rocks- thank you girl!), I noticed something. It’s amazing to me how quickly we can create a little band of “us” when we feel united against something. What if “us” included everybody in the world, and what if what we were united against was unhappiness?
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a little slice of humanity from the great big apple
Come Together. Right now. Over me.
- A Fellow Traveler...
- When I first moved to New York, I found the subways incredibly depressing. I am a people person, maybe a little empathic, maybe just over-involved in life and over-interested in whatever it is that flows in the space between people…I don’t know. All I know is that seeing so many people look so vacant and disengaged was hard. For a while, I tried turning on my IPod wherever I went, or burying myself in a book or magazine, but it felt wrong, lonely, tiresome to have to constantly maintain my own isolated little bubble. So one day I quit. I started smiling at people, making an effort to compliment, or at the very least, acknowledge people. And it felt good. Turns out all those vacant looking shells are full of real souls if you know how to find them. It feels good to connect with people, and I want to share that feeling. With you. With the people I commute home alongside tonight. With everybody.
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1 comment:
For every 1 person in this city who is cold and standoffish as a rule, there are five others who are dying to make contact with people, even if it is just a collective grimace at some spit on a subway seat. I like those odds. Many people in New York aren't New Yorkers, at least not originally, and they're as caught up in this crazy city as we are, and as eager to make something simple and beautiful out of it. Some of them just don't know it yet...but I think this blog is a good place to help show them.
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