Enjoying the view
Posted on | May 5, 2019 | No Comments
It’s easy to search for yourself in other people’s attention. To define yourself by what they see. It’s a stranger and more interesting thought experiment to see yourself in others. I often do this when I’m sad and I gaze at people in the subway in the mornings and warm myself on how tired and depressed they all look. Like we are in this together guys. It sucks for everyone.
I found myself doing this in a different way today at the park. There was a young couple who was also a new couple because there were grossly making out in the park and I judged them. Forgetting how hilariously childish I am whenever I fall in love and realize that person is right there beside me and can be touched.
I turned my head and saw someone staring at their laptop screen with insane fascination even though the sun was reflecting off his screen. I saw two best friends smoking a joint and laughing and telling the stupidest stories I’ve ever heard. And it occurred to me that I’ve been these people and will be them again.
The human experience is a continuum not one moment stretched one forever.
I’ve been the new couple and the stoner and the cartoonist working on his laptop in the glare of sunlight. I’ve been the broken-hearted young dude experiencing his first break up unable to feel the warmth of the sun on his skin because I was trapped in my mind.
If you walk down the street and look you can see people all experiencing the same palette of feelings. Everything you feel is felt by millions of people.
The couple will one day experience the broken-heartedness of the young man and that young man will one day skip down the street humming Leon Bridges.
If you walk down the street and seriously look you can see how much more you are going to feel as long as you continue moving through all the versions of yourself you get to be. You can see their pain and know it as your own and open your heart to it. Because you’re never going to figure it all out. You have been full of success and had a guaranteed future and that disappeared. You have been broke and spending money hurt you. You’ve been careless and bought things you didn’t need and that disappeared too.
You can smile at their first kisses. You can laugh at their stoned out puns. Remembering when those moments were yours.
You aren’t special. You get heartbreak and you get laughter and you get to be kissed. I’m not speaking of solipsism or to imagine we are living exactly the same experience. But when you walk down a street in summer you can see how much bigger you are than the space you currently inhabit.
And it feels nice to be a part of something so ridiculous and vast.
Comments
Leave a Reply