Young talents - Thoughts in the Train Tunnel
The half-hour subway rides I take on the days of the week are anything but boring to me. From the loud posters to the graffiti on the walls, the subway always gives a different experience every time you hop on. Whether you’re on the train during the early mornings of a weekday, coming home from a game on a Saturday night or perhaps stuck among the crowds during rush hour, the subway always has people of all sorts. One may be going to see a friend, one may be going to school, one may have just left a long grueling day at work, another, heading to the station, leaving home for the first time. Everyone going somewhere else, somewhere new, yet we all come together in moments of silence as the train runs through its stops. Stranger next to stranger, stuck to their phones, their newspapers, their headphones, missing the bigger picture.
The subway is a place of imagination, a place of reflection, a place of the unknown. The subway is a pause in time, the moment leading to the beginning of a journey. I look around and see the different people and the different things they bring. A man with flowers, a woman with a baby, a young boy with large headphones and a lady with a beret. Maybe the man is on his way to an anniversary, on his way to propose to his long-time lover, or maybe even on his way to a funeral. Maybe the woman is the mother of the child, or an aunt, maybe even an older sister spending the day with her younger self. And who knows what the young man listens to on those large headphones? The stylings of rock legend AC/DC or maybe the Serene Melodies of Mozart? Maybe he does not even listen to anything, but uses the headphones as means to avoid strange conversation? Finally, the woman with the Beret. Could she be a newcomer from France or perhaps working in a French café, maybe even a French fashion house? Maybe she isn’t French at all?
These things I will never know for certain but that is the beauty that comes with these moments. I will never know the true stories of these strangers.
I will never know if I will ever see them again; if I would recognize them from our brief glimpses at each other or perhaps completely wiping my mind off their faces the moment they reach their destination. However, remembering these faces is not the takeaway from each train ride.
It’s the possibility: the possibility that you can meet a lifelong friend, an enemy or even a great love on a simple train ride.
These strangers may walk in your life a week from now, a month, even ten years from now, or maybe never even cross paths with you again; nevertheless, the everlasting sensation of the possibility of a great adventure granted during a ride offers inspiration, a temporary pause from real life, a mystery that will never be solved, a wrinkle in time if you may.
Endless faces seen on endless days with endless possibilities of endless adventures.
So next time you find yourself sitting in a crowded subway, look around, see the possibility, let your imagination run free, and who knows all these dreams and made-up stories just may become a a reality one day.
By Vlad Zamrii
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Editor's note ;
Vlad Zamrii is a student at the University of Toronto
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By Vlad Zamrii 9/9/2022 |
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