I could spend hours getting lost in a city.
It captivates me, always urging me to explore it a little further. My admiration is not from the various shops, restaurants, or the nooks and crannies.
No, there’s something deeper.
Once I missed my stop on a bus. I was stuck in a trance. A stranger dressed in the most peculiar clothing had caught my mind. So colourful, like they had just walked out of a cartoon. I wondered where they had gotten these clothes. Who were they going to meet? Were they going home to their parents? What music did they listen to? Were they more of a music or a podcast person? By the time they left the bus, I had given them a favourite band, a difficult relationship with their father, and the dream of fame.
Strange.
But most days, I’m not stuck in a trance. More often, I’m half-listening to music, catching up on emails, or worrying about a comment from earlier that day. My mind falls into these well known daily worries. Yet, every so often, something jolts me out of these routines.
It may be the image of a family sitting around a bench and laughing together. Or perhaps two friends loudly discussing which fictional superhero would win in a fight. It drags me out of my head and makes me pause. After all, it doesn’t really matter if that one guy liked me or not, and I don't really need to respond to every email.
I could just simply exist for a moment.
The tip taps made by the steps of a child and their parent as they walk side by side. The joy on a stranger’s face reading an envelope held close. The sight of a couple dozing off together on the bus. The excitement in the voice of a teenager celebrating their first paycheck. The sorrowful glance exchanged between two passerbys. How people weave their way between the puddles of rain—like an unspoken dance. The sound of rushed footsteps all around. Ever wonder where they’re rushing to?
There are entire lives that occur around us with nobody to observe them. It makes me feel small. And yet, I praise this feeling. It seems to make all my worries—if only for a moment— disappear. When I see so many people, each carrying their own invisible weight of worries, fears, motivations, my own begins to feel weightless. It is perhaps this unspoken connection between the people that makes me pause, and finally observe.
A striking observation I catch through the window is how the skyscrapers of the modern age stand up against the battered older structures. The sheen of the clean glass blinds me, in contrast to the dull brick of the buildings from another time.
These buildings are littered with clues of people’s existence. Perhaps a chipped brick was an accidental swing of a cricket bat. Maybe an empty alleyway was where a group of friends met when bunking class. With no name, no impact, no change from their life, these people of the past often fade from history.
How many have been lost to time?
How long before we, too, are lost?
My imagination runs wild with stories of people in a different time. A mother rushed to work, leaving her children behind in haste. Someone finally left their town and came to the big city. A child’s excitement kept them from sleeping late into the night. Someone fell in love for the first time.
These stories of nameless average people—just like me—serve me a reminder to take it easy, as it will all be forgotten. If I’m not Gandhi or Stalin my name will be forgotten, never to be written down in the history books.
To me, however, this is liberation. Not a disappointment.
This stark reminder that my actions won't be remembered, much less studied, is freeing. It allows me to act more true to the person I wish to be, without the burden of judgement. Every single human who ever lived has worried, whether it be about their next meal or about their co worker's prying comments. But knowing that this weight of worry has been carried by countless others—names long forgotten—changes something. Realizing that this same tendency to worry, to be so utterly human, echoes through time makes my own burden feel just a little lighter.
