As I was riding the train one day, staring out the window as the country side passed by, a random scene popped into my head. I often think that there is a natural beauty that is hidden behind wearing the facades that we do, in order to feel like we fit in. Something lost in the constant control that we impose upon our selves whenever we are in the presence of strangers. Catching someone that is unaware that you are looking at them can sometimes almost seem to alter reality. A small glimpse imbued with enough power to enrapture you for just an instant within its purity, absent from all of the human induced mirage. That single, perfectly timed, heartbeat, when you just happen to catch somebody who let it all go, reboot all of their defenses, just long enough to allow the escape, of but a single shard of the reflection of their true self.
Then I thought about how cynical the world had become and how that could detract so much from such beauty. I thought about how invested we humans are in our assumptions, how we read a situation and instantaneously build a conclusion that is ours and ours alone. Because in truth, the echos of your conviction had never been heard in the realms governed by those around you. They faded at your borders, never making so much as a single vibration in any other reality but the one of your own making. The irony of how confined we all become sometimes, stuck in a repeating loop of dancing to the musing of your past's imagination. It was within the amalgamation of this context that this scene had formed. The vision of a situation so misinterpreted, yet sadly filled with possibility and potential accuracy, where even a simple gesture of genuine innocence could be rewarded with convictions that couldn't be more completely undeserved. This is a product of that Ying/Yang balance of thought streams in story form.
She was sitting on the train, talking on the phone, I happened to look just as she smiled to whoever it was that she was talking to. It was the slightest of expressions, not over the top, just the right amount. I watched mesmerized as she finished her conversation, presumably said her goodbyes and hung up the line. Her eyes drifted in my direction, locking gazes from across the trains limited expanse.
"What are you staring at creep?" she nearly yelled across the open distance at me, it took me a minute to realize that she was talking to me, and that I had still been staring at her. I started to panic, I could feel my cheeks starting to warm as I looped through possible excuses. After a consecutive string of moments that all failed to produce any better excuses, the mounting pressure hit it's breaking point, and I found myself inclined to blurt out the truth... It was, after all, based in a much better version of reality than the creepy connotation that her tone was attempting to imprison me in.
"What, oh I'm so sorry, I hadn't realized I was staring. Please forgive me, but you see, well, every day life tries its hardest to beat us down, to reveal to us how horrible we are to each other, how hard life can truly be. We are after all living in a world that allows people to die every single day from starvation, when millions of people throw away more than enough food to keep the dying from death. We live in a world that forces people to sleep on the streets because others have deemed that the basic necessities needed to sustain a basic life should cost more than some can afford. We live in a world that is so expensive, that people die because they can't get the medicines they need. Not because they are hard to make, or that the resources to make them are lacking, but instead because people want to accumulate more paper in their pockets, and in their bank accounts, and for no other reason what so ever.
Every single day, when you leave your house and walk to school, or to work, or even to the store, you see sadness, you see despair, you see cruelty and horror. Sure you can ignore these things, but if you're paying attention, you can't avert them, it's quite literally everywhere. All of the sadness, all of the pain it can wear on people. It can really get you down when you start to think about how shitty the world can be. So everyday I try my hardest to counter balance that feeling by looking, by really paying attention to the world we live in. Not to block out or point out the atrocities, but instead to look for the things that exist in the world that make all of the torment that we live in worth it. Provide a little balance to all of the chaos and the atrocities that constantly surround us.
Sometimes it's easy, sometimes you're staring out from the top of a mountain, or surrounded by the beauty of nature, or are lucky enough to be swimming on a beach, basking in a calm blue serenity. But other day's its more challenging, you have to really pay attention you know, you have to really focus, and really look hard to find that one moment of beauty that at the end of the day you can remember as your drifting off to sleep. The one glimpse, the one snapshot that brings a smile to your face as you drift out of consciousness because it has the ability to brighten even the darkest of days. Today that thing is you.
A few minutes ago you were talking on the phone, and the smile that spread across your face was the most beautiful thing that I've seen today. It was honest, it was pure, a vision of rarity in a world that is projected to us almost always from behind a facade of some sort or another. That brief moment took me in, it mesmerized me, it made me forget about my shitty boss, my looming deadlines, my loneliness. It made the stress that I feel almost every single minute of the day just melt away. It swept me up into a moment of peace and tranquility, and made me remember the feeling of the sun shining bright on the clearest of days, or the luminance of the moon on a cool clear night. It made me thankful to be alive, just so that I was here, to have this experience of having witnessed it.
I was so caught up in that moment that I forgot that I was staring at a person, and that my gaze could make that person uncomfortable, and so for that, I apologize. I am genuinely sorry for having been the cause of a moment of discomfort for you. But please know that for the cost of those few breaths of your discomfort, you bought an unimaginable amount of radiance and of appreciation to somebody else. So with my apology, and my appreciation, I thank you."
Her look softened, perhaps not as much as I had hoped telling her the truth would persuade, but enough to see that she may have, for at least, an instant, reconsidered the accusatory tone that she had lobbed in my direction. We sat in silence for what seemed like an eternity. Each breath taking a seemingly endless amount of time to both draw, and then release. To my relief, within only a few of these never-ending cycles the train started to slow, shuttering slightly before finally coming to a stop. It wasn't my stop, but when the doors opened, I found myself getting up and jumping out anyway as if it was. It was a cowardly way to save myself from any further embarrassment of that encounter I will admit, but it was well worth both the dissolution of the immense awkwardness I felt, and the time involved in waiting a few extra minutes for the next train to come along, so that I could continue on my way.
Standing on the platform, I cracked my neck to ease some of the tension from it, and then started to pace forward slowly, pulling my phone out of my pocket to simultaneously give a performance, to project one of the same bullshit facades that I had just mentioned, the appearance that my departure had a purpose other than my feeble attempt to escape such an uncomfortable situation. As the carriage doors closed, and the train started to move forward with a familiar shutter, I glanced up to give a final departing scan out of curiosity to see if there was any change in her disposition. Our eyes met for one more brief moment through the window as the train started to gain momentum. It lasted just long enough to see her form a slight smile once more, as she nodded her head to me, just ever so slightly, perhaps in some form of appreciation of her own. Within seconds, the train accelerated, my eyes following it until it eventually sped out of sight, taking her with it, and leaving behind the finality of this strange and insanely awkward, yet still beautiful experience that we had just shared. An encounter, no matter how brief, that I will remember, just like the feeling of the sun shining bright on the clearest of days, or the luminance of the moon on a cool clear night.
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