I met a man once who was singing to the souls of the city and he reminded me of what I had forgotten: this life is absolutely, undeniably beautiful in every way shape and form. He made me realize that the millions of people that I pass on the streets every day, are in fact people. Sonder. This is my new favorite word that essentially means coming to the realization that each random passerby is living just as vivid and complex of a life as your own. They have ambitions, hopes, dreams, vices, friends, family, worries… anything and everything that you deal with on the day to day, chances are, they have their own variations of essentially the same thing. Forgetting this simple, humanizing fact is what causes us to look right over the beauty in the subtle mundanities we experience every day and create an unnecessary separation between ourselves. So I stood there and watched this man…
A New York City Lullaby:
He has an iguana sitting on his speaker while a voice of the past sings lullabies to the numbed ears of the city. His body quivers, as his soul radiates through the crowded station. He sings to preserve his memories; to keep himself alive, to believe in yesterday. He sings to pay for his apartment in the outskirts of the city, to feed his children, to make his wife smile the same smile that he fell in love with over 40 years ago. He sings; even when his lips aren't moving. His smile preserves the memory of his silenced voice. "Take a sad song and make it better"
He whispers to me in verse. As I smile and walk away he gives me scribbles on a scrap of paper. His business card. He asks my name and I board the train, and his lyrical whispers
will forever reverberate through my brain.
This world is a beautiful place; this life is a beautiful space. I’m not even speaking of the obvious beauties, the things you see on the cover of travel magazines or postcards; I’m speaking of the subtle beauties that go unnoticed in our everyday lives.
You’re walking down the street and see a tattered ‘missing dog’ poster on the pole as you’re waiting to cross. It’s been there for months with nothing but the dogs face showing from under the papers that have been plastered on top of it. It appears to be nothing…
But that poster was probably one of a hundred that some heartbroken pet owner spent hours and hours scattering all over the city just so that they had some hope to hold onto. The poster may seem like nothing to you, but that weathered scrap of paper tells a story of a little piece of another human beings life that has intersected with yours for just a moment. You might never know how the story started or ended but I challenge you to appreciate the moment of it that you’ve captured.
Their past is intersecting with your present. There are literally billions of us on this big blue ball, so obviously our lives will coincide with one another at a certain point… but that’s exactly the idea. Our lives swerve in, out, and around each other all day, every day, and yet rarely do we acknowledge the little mundanities in life that will cause us to truly appreciate them. When you can appreciate the little things, you don’t have to wait around for some big, extravagant thing to happen. Rather, you’re in awe with the moment and every human, animal, crack, crevice, and perfect imperfect in it.
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