Husain, my husband, always tells me i think too much. and really? sometimes i think he doesn’t think enough. and between the two of us it hits me that he is the happier one, so maybe he’s on to something. ignorance is bliss right?
but i cant help it. i am thinking about the lady in the car next to mine at the red light. she seems deep in thought, what is she thinking about? i think about the man in the red hoodie i caught a glimpse of last night standing alone in the empty, dimly lit parking lot as i drove by. what brings him here? i think about the girl from back home i no longer talk to, what’s she up to these days? i think about the older man on a domestic flight in the US who had an iron ring on his pinky finger. that tells me he’s an engineer from Canada. perhaps, i walked the same campus as he once did? i think about my mother-in-law when she was a young girl, picturing her laughing with her friends before she became a wife and a mother to my husband. what were her dreams and aspirations? and i feel this odd sense of loss, akin to missed opportunities.
i think about these total strangers. in ways that are too, almost unnecessarily, deep than it needs to be. what are their lives like? how much different to mine are their lives? because see, i know they have to be complex. my life cannot be the only one thats complex and intricate. this much i know.
i contemplate whether i should honk and try and get the attention of the lady in the car next to mine? get her to roll down her windows only to say, “i see you. tell me about your entire life in the few minutes we stuck here for. i want to understand you. i feel your presence.” no lol, that’s too cringe, chill. besides what if someone did that to me? to be honest, i’d freak out. possibly even run the red light just to try and get away. but then… also, if someone did do that to me i’d know i am not alone.
why does it matter anyway? i ask myself. to know about the life this complete stranger’s fully lived without ever crossing paths with mine apart from this red light that brought us together in the present moment? i think it matters because i need to know and fully understand how big the world truly is. it minimizes the complexities of my world that exists inside my head.
and yet… in parallel this thinking is incongruously isolating. because there is so much still untouched by my existence. there are vastly infinite experiences in the human existence; from the beginning of time, from Adam and Eve to myself. and i am so f*cking tiny in the grand scheme of things. a fraction of a drop in this ocean of life. i feel small. so so small.
if Husain were here, he’d tell me i’m spiraling again and i’d tell him how at least i am not pondering over what its like to live a life of a jellyfish, i joke internally. not yet anyway, lol. but holy shit, it’s true, i will never know what its like to live in the ocean… okay, maybe i am spiraling. stop being crazy and snap out of it.
i look to my right at the lady in the car again and realize this is what Sonder is:
n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own — populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness — an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk. https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/23536922667/sonder
and i realize this is why i love books. because while i can’t roll down my window and ask the lady in the car next to mine to pour her heart out to me i can certainly explore lives without violating social etiquette through fiction. i can explore what its like to live in a state of war, or be a drug addict, or maybe even fall in love with a murderer.
and as the light turns green, i think about Husain again. this is why he is happier, he only concerns himself with the present moment, the here and now of the people he’s with. maybe ignorance is bliss… i speed ahead, leaving the lady behind in my rearview mirror… but nah.
until next time. until the next red light.
