“Old? But I’m not that old. Young? But I’m not that bold.”
– Counting Stars
It’s the same journey every day.
The dug-dug of the train, the chatter of the commuters, the scent of the sweat of this hardworking city. It’s as if I pedal along in a pantomime of this local train with all these different people. Most days, I lose myself in the commotion. It is drowned by the louder noises of my shamelessly un-updated and worn-out playlist with all the music that I have bothered to listen to over the years. Somedays, even that becomes a white noise and is overtaken by the even louder noises, in my own head. So, it’s usually just me and my thoughts sitting close to people on the subway but away from any social contact. Unless something catches my eyes or ears. And today, it did.
It’s very rare to hear anything apart from the cackles and the complaints that surround me constantly on the rail, but their laughter pierced through the noise and their smiles, the otherwise ugly underground sight. As I snapped away from the melodies of blues in my ears and broodings of an exhausting workday from my mind, I searched for the source. The train had halted at a stop and I saw them. Dressed in rags with disheveled faces, the sight of these little scamps in the forlorn slums made me look at them almost pityingly. They seemed so desolate in their desperate lives, waddling through muddy waters and bopping on the roads. Where do they go from here? How sad it is to be born such a way. Surely, they are trapped!
I leaned over and placed my palms on the crisscrossed train windowsills to have a better look. I tried to catch their eye, just to give a sympathetic nod stemming from my undue privilege. But they didn’t have a care in the world, and certainly none for me. I tried and tried and tried, to reach out and entangle their sights with mine, to reach out from behind those greasy grills, I wanted to maybe assure them that they are okay, but also try to understand why I was not okay with how could they make merry amidst the misery. But I couldn’t. The train had had its short stupor and had now started to move, groaning to get up and get going but then picking pace towards its destination. In that moment of unrest, I thought to maybe even holler at them to tell me how is it that they are so happy trapped in their miserable lives. Just shout it back to me, before the train takes me away! And in that new commotion within me, I finally understood what I had failed to see at first.
I was the one who was trapped. Not them.
I was the one trapped, the one behind bars, the one who couldn’t move despite being on a moving train. For them, life was in the now and here. It wasn’t burdened with the duties of tomorrow but uplifted with the dreams of today. For me, life was always a constant chase, only that I wasn’t going anywhere.
The train chugged away, leaving those laughing kids and my head churning with thoughts. It’s easy to stand tight in my shoes and see the things that same as ever from where I was. But sometimes, we need to refocus our perspectives to be able to see beyond the barriers. Maybe it does take that much more, or maybe just some bunch of kids on the road. But in the end, we have to learn to let go, enjoy and see the other side of things.
