People Watching
It is fascinating to think how much we can learn about people just by stopping to observe. Whether we’re people-watching from within a train — noting the tattoos of the man across from us and the tiny circles the bespectacled woman is making with her left foot — or we’re seated in a coffee shop — watching the world go by outside, no one aware of our existence or our brief window into their world — we transcend into a different state of being, one where we are looking within from without. It is both empowering and particularly lonely, as if we are ghosts noting the existence of everyone as they continue right past, never once aware of us.
When you are people-watching you can see the peculiar perversity that, even amidst suffocatingly large crowds, people still somehow think they are isolated and alone. People-watching gives you not just a new view on other people, but on the world. The people are the cogs, and it is only through removing oneself from the machine that one can see the whole splendid thing working away.