Look up-- because you are missing it.

Okay, let's face it. I am a child of the suburbs, I am from Boston but pronounce all of my R's, Boston is one of the best walking cities in the world and I find a painful way to be within a mile radius of my vehicle at all times and unsuccessfully following the blue dot on my GPS (which has ironically left me even more lost than prehistoric pre-GPS times). As I find myself working downtown I have no choice but to abandon my vehicle neglectfully on the side of the road and ride this giant piece of metal to the concrete playground everyday. Pretty quickly my friendly suburbian persona has subsided because it has attracted nothing but highly unwanted attention from creepy men, a varying level of both harmless and mildly terrifying mentally ill folks.

As I have begun riding the train I have decided that I greatly despise the way our culture has morphed into a bunch of zombies staring at screens. Despite the pressing need to check and look at our phone (that has audible alerts for this exact purpose) it has shined light upon what it is doing to our already short attention spans. I have also come to the conclusion that those I notice who refuse to keep their heads down and neck strained are either mentally ill or have become my newly chosen best friends in a sea of mindless robots.

Even when our behavior is displayed as this post is on the internet it brings about the feeling that we are constantly competing for attention. We have to be more interesting, bigger--louder--more bold to grab attention. We are simply oversaturated by stimuli diminishing the importance of everyday interactions and choose to lift our heads for a select few things--sex--pizza--ice cream-- the usual suspects. This-- I find to be just plain sad. So I find myself putting down my phone and just observe. 

Last night after working a 12 hour day of craziness I began looking around at all the different faces on the train. I imagined where each person might be coming from, the kind of day they might be having, the type of life they were living. I began involuntarily making judgements and guesses and made up stories of the lives of these strangers-- as I began to stop myself a beautiful interaction caught my attention specifically. 

There was this family that got on the train--a mother, father, son and daughter. The father and son got on and sat in a seat next to this middle-aged woman. She looked disheveled--her clothes misshapen and hung like it was effort for them to not just slip off her small body. She was covered in a film of dirt holding a crumpled whole foods bag and was adorned with mismatched plastic jewelry, and a black eye and bruised cheekbone. There was something about her though-- a kindness--a light in her eyes. I hadn't seen it until this little boy and father came to sit next to her though. She had been out light a light practically snoring until this little boy showed her some unfiltered attention. 

The thing I love about children is that they are not jaded. They often times see things for how they are and are not. They do not know what "experience" has shown them, they do not have preconceived notions or prejudices. Often we dismiss them as though their observations are silly but if we think about some of the things they say and notice-- children are actually pretty profound. 

This boy as though he had known this woman his whole life crawled up onto her lap and began playing with her plastic beads and giving her a hug. This woman awoke from her previously neutral demeanor and I saw her eyes light up just like the child's did. They played together like they had known each other for an eternity. I also found it interesting that the parents did nothing to stop it. Interesting not in a way that I was judging the parents like many may--they were intuitive enough to see that this woman was not a threat. It is not that these parents were being naive to a potentially dangerous situation it was that they were so in tune with the light and beauty coming from this woman despite her outward appearance they accepted the interaction. The boy and woman played for what seemed like an eternity and just a moment simultaneously. I looked around and most of the train could barely look up from their scrolling Facebook screens. Within an instant the family was off at their next stop and were gone in an instant. With no witnesses except myself and this one other guy. 

It is that to which I am afraid. To waste so much of my valuable and precious time on this planet waiting to be interesting enough to capture the attention in competition with a small metal box. Well here's the thing. I am more interesting than a small metal box and there is no competition. Only those who are capable of truly appreciating what is truly important in life and that is what is living and breathing. 

Moral being to myself and to those around me with this common addiction--look up because you are missing it.