I wiped the frost off the cold glass window as the bus zoomed past the night. I checked my watch. It was five to one, and everyone else was asleep. I looked at the fog and caught a glimpse of the nebulous world I lived in. For a change, it looked exactly like it was: unclear and blurry. There are moments when, once again, we come face to face with how irrelevant all our little and large troubles are simply because so many others live lives as vivid as our own. Sonder, they call it these days. It is a popular word indeed, and for good reason. I reckon we all ought to experience it now and then, deliberately, even if life does not give us a chance. But then, life rarely passes an opportunity to make you feel this troubling belonging, this odd kinship. I am a person because I have worries of my own. I see you, too, have some in your backpack. Perhaps, we can be friends, and if that is not possible for reasons unknown, then let us simply smile and excuse each other as we pass by.
Places like a filled bus or a crowded mall are a microcosm of the world. If you can navigate through them well enough, rest assured, you can navigate through the world. And if you can tolerate your urban loneliness in them, be sure, you will always handle your own in life. At least, this has been my experience. You feel a specific sort of alone in a bus cruising through the midnight hour along empty highways and backroads. Most often, the best course of action is to get some shut-eye like everyone else, but then, if you are like me and you struggle to sleep now and then, another thing to do is revel in the moment.
You can feel alive at the edge of some mountain or some cliff, feeling the tremendous range of human emotions all at once. That is one way to go about it. Another is to sit in a bus and look at the sheer breadth of the human experience, to notice the people and how they carry themselves. That, too, makes you feel alive. Everyone has someplace to be, but here, for this little slice of time, we all go together. How could someone not feel life surging through them when this happens?