Humans in the city
Figures, movement, traffic, suits, laptops and phones, the street is active, it's alive. Lovers, mothers, loners are all going to their offices, meet with clients, bosses, colleagues to work or to find work to keep pursuing or start their dreams.
There is a smell of success in the morning streets of a big city.
And we are all sniffing it whilst getting that same shared sense of purpose.
What does it takes though for a city to be friendly to our (human) kind and its natural desires, what is our role in that? How to balance our humanity and our societal status ? Where do we find our self's centre amongst the crowd and how can we interact with the people we meet everyday?
People who are walking the same routes as us, stop at the same traffic lights as us, standing next to us, return from work and go back to the same street/ building as us. We share our present time and that is a powerful combination. But how do we connect with them if ever?
A fair point is that we didn't choose those people so why would we care about connecting with them. And I could argue the same for our families. We didn't choose that very defining part of our lives yet we consider our parents some of the most important people -even later in life not just while we grow up- we let them affect us deeply in our choice of lifestyle. our psychology, our relationships to others.
In these unchosen sectors of life and if we take for granted the fact that we (humans) are not to exist in isolation, one should wonder where do I get the space to be the individual person I want to be? How do I choose what expresses me in this vast cityscape-where no one seems to have time for me? How do I find my voice? My own thoughts, ideas and feelings, fears and allow my moments of weakness to be seen? How can I make myself happy? And Is there space for that to happen in that simple moment when you wait for that traffic light to change next to those strangers?
In big cities it's a common phenomenon for people to find a place where they can isolate themselves in order to release the deeper layers of their personalities and come face to face with their agonies and their existential questions. And I can't help but wonder why do we have this inherited fear for exposing our real selves? Where did it start, is it inherited by society or is it a human mechanism coming from our instincts for survival?
Surviving and living are two very different ways of spending our time on earth, and as it often happens the answer lies within the very questions we impose to ourselves and is simpler than we think. On that street, in that present time with these random people if you look up and imagine our view from the sky we all look the same and we most likely look for the same things, there is something hard to define in words about the present time of our era that unites us all.
In our absolute human core the man in the suit, or the one who sleeps at the side of the pavement, the girl with the heavy make- we all woke up and got out of bed with a single purpose to make our lives happier. So going back to the our view from high up our allies are actually standing next to us, they are not in a different country or at our destination for the day- after all again most people at work we didn't choose. Our allies in happiness are not in that locked off environment we create for ourselves when we return back home. They are not just our partners and friends, they can be all the people we pass by that we share our present with. We just need to let go and make the most of it.
We are all on the same path and our trails will eventually cross, what we choose to do will eventually set off a chain of events that will affect others, so what's the point in holding back connecting on a more conscious level with those others?
