Small Joys in a Big City

I saw a beautiful thing today on the way to work.

Living in this city of 4.5 million, I have like most people, learned to carefully avert my eyes from most of the people surrounding me. Even (or especially) when packed into a subway or a bus during rush hour. Despite the most intimate of physical contact between me and the person who's butt I'm plastered up against, I still manage to maintain the illusion of boundary and personal space, by simply avoiding eye contact. The goal of course, is twofold: one is to avoid unwanted conversation with a potential weirdo, and the other is to avoid invading other peoples' personal space (as if having my nose in their armpit isn't an invasion enough!).

Today, while hanging onto a pole, and ducking my head between the lady in red's handbag, and the man in blue's shirtsleeve, I spotted a rather disshevled looking fellow, who appeared to be talking to himself over everyone's head. Much to my surprise however, he wasn't talking to himself - he was talking to the pretty young lady standing next to me. The juxtaposition of his rather unfortunate appearance, and her well-coiffed outfit struck my interest, so I decided to be nosy and listen on.

From their conversation, it appeared that they did not know one another, but rather had just met on the subway a few moments ago. Rather than being off-put by this stranger who was chatting with her, this young woman rather seemed to enjoy speaking with him. They covered all sorts of topics, learning things about one another, and found that they even had some common interests (both for example, played a musical instrument).

As other well-dressed folks entered the subway, they seemed to clearly veer away from this fellow (who emitted a rather poignant odour). However they too seemed to stop, and observe this ongoing conversation with interest. Clearly the sight of a disshelved middle-aged man and a pretty, young, well-dressed woman engaged in a mutually respectful conversation was of interest to many of us.

It made me realize how the personal boundaries we put up in a large city are attempts to avoid precisely interactions such as these. How our desire to walk through crowds of people without actually seeing any of them has become so normalized, that it now a point of interest when we see strangers actually interacting spontaneously.

To me, it was a beautiful sight to see two strangers who did not let socio-economic barriers prevent them from seeing the humanity in one another. It made me realize that for all the fears we harbour about the "other", the joys we can receive by opening ourselves up can be immensely larger yet.