Thought no.36 – Strangers

They’re everywhere. You can’t go anywhere without running into one. There are more of them then there are people you are familiar with. There will always be more of them. You can’t hide from them. Or run away from them. This is life and in life strangers follow you everywhere you go. Being an avid commuter on buses I am constantly bombarded with strangers. Now and again I’ll recognise a face as our routines clash and we become regular strangers within each others lives.

Strangers I see are background characters to me, but I am a background character to them. So on a bus with a collection of main characters all stuck within one proximity you can’t help but feel overwhelmed. Strangers are a creature that all of us are afraid of, we are afraid that a stranger might say something to us or ask us a question, or we might be afraid to embarrass ourselves in front of one of them. We are afraid to show ourselves up and give a terrible first impression.

The truth is, we all too engrossed in ourselves to care about each other. For a second I might wonder about these strangers and their own stories. But that moment passes and I am back to being the selfish human that I am and thinking about my own life.

They are beautiful creatures that we should cherish more. We need to face our fears, because a stranger can open us up into a new world. Just reaching out to a stranger immediately means we are no longer a background character without a cameo, or a line in their story, or a mention of our face. If we reach out to them, whether it be with a smile, a question, a compliment, we are immediately making our stories cross. Through just becoming a regular in someone else’s life means I have breached the cover of their book and have been allowed to become part of their story and them part of mine.

Strangers are amazing and I wish I wasn’t so afraid of them. I wish I wasn’t afraid because they can take me on a whole new adventure even just for a second; strangers are what get us out of our own story and into someone else’s. They let us breach a new world which our friends and family can’t give us as they are part of our stories. Strangers aren’t but they could be and that is the most exciting thing of all. A stranger’s world is completely foreign and unknown to us and that is the most exciting thing of all because there is this whole person with a past and a future that you may never know, but you could. That’s the thing with strangers there is that possibility that they could be something within your story. They could be a vital character, a vital plot point. The possibilities that lay within this person is what makes a stranger a stranger. If only we weren’t all so afraid to reach out.

Thought no. 4 – I’m alive

Sometimes I have these sudden realisations that I am alive and this is my life. I always think in these moments, what am I so afraid of? why am I so ashamed and fearful of telling people how I feel? I mean only get the one chance, this one life. Why do I just assume that I won’t achieve my dreams? I mean I can do anything and why shouldn’t I try? I mean I only have the one lifetime, so screw people saying you need to think of a realistic job, or you need have a backup. If I have a dream I should get to live it, I should at least try and live it. I shouldn’t be ashamed of my dream and concerned with what people think because screw them. I am alive! They are alive! Why should we spend our lives being unhappy? Why should we spend them not doing what we want to do?

But then of course these moments of realisation end and I am back to I was before, a deeply unhappy, unmotivated person who cannot see how huge her world really is and how full of possibilities it is. Why can’t I always be aware of the fact that I am alive and literally anything is possible and I can do anything. I think that that is one of the saddest parts of life, because don’t always see that you can do whatever you want and be whoever you want. Anything is possible and we so often forget that.