Sonder

Nervous whispers in a busy place. Before his eyes, a hundred lives have passed, a hundred people all going their different ways. The weight of it is crushing to the sleep-deprived mind. The weight of knowing, without being able to feel, that every weary traveller he sees is just as real and complete as him. That every over-tired passerby who skates past or slightly lingers near where he sits and writes is just the same. Hiding truths and potentials no one else will ever come to know.

They have their fears, each of them, and they keep those close beside their hopes. But then, so does he. Though he feels apart, distinct and alien from the shuffling humanity that walks before his eyes, he is the same as they. None of them an island. None more or less than him.

Across the aisle someone stands. The strings that guide their limbs on their course are unseen, and in a moment, they are gone. But before they go, their gaze lands on him, lands and lingers.

Meeting their eye, he pauses and wonders what caught their attention, if anything did at all. Each person is their own self, and though in critical and human ways they are all the same, he will never know their thoughts. Nor yet the reasons for their actions any more than the trails that brought those thoughts forward.

His shirt is red, his jacket green. Perhaps it is only that the stranger’s eyes have seen. Beyond the walls, our in the air, the sun beats down with painful glare. 35 degrees is blistering hot, and still months away were he at home. Still, he’d rather be there than not.

Scent assaults him as he writes, a blended bag of sharp ‘delights.’ A long travel day has had its way with the group sat just behind and to the left, though his nose is far from deft. Nonetheless he wishes well to them despite the smell. Then they are gone, their boarding called, leaving his senses no longer appalled.

Behind him now a new voice sounds, a unique paring among the flowing mass that flutters by. Accented language of his home, answered by a fluent tone. Young and nervous love it seems to be, with a man’s parents mentioned frequently. He wishes them the best of luck in this next test. And hopes that Cupid’s arrow truly struck. Though he might suggest, if he were to speak, that she not mention Pretty Woman quite so often even as a comedic crutch, when the mother-in-law has her in her clutch.

Young and old, tall and short, small and large, there is no standard to the flow of life. Nor to the frightening uniqueness of every passing face. Each of them a fractal of a human life, infinitely flowing through their reasons, each unique as a passing season.

None know him, nor he any of them. Each one a mystery even to their friends, one to be unraveled but never known. Human each of them, and alien to his understanding. Those with whom he came have left, gone on ahead and left him waiting for the fractals at the gate to call his flight. He knows he won’t land before the light has left the world again for night.

But there is adventure here. Almost enough to potential to force a tear.

Despite the differences in their lives, between those around his waiting form and his own, they are all the same. Each knows how they thrive, yet none can fully grasp what lies beneath, the tired smiles on every face. What lurks behind the nervous whispers in such a busy place.