do
you ever look around at the big crowds of people around you
and realize everyone has a
story and memories and family and troubles
and achievements and a first
kiss and a broken heart but you’ll never
know any of it and every human
life is really intricate and expansive but
oh they’ve walked into
a shop and you’ll never see them again and
you’ll never know just what they
were thinking
the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
I think about this a lot