A couple of weeks ago I walked into a pole.
Let me give you a little context here before we get into the nitty gritty. Walk with me friend, come with me and experience my morning ~ routine ~.
I commute to work. As a #poorgirl, I regretfully have to say that I still live with my parents in their suburban home. All facts aside, it has its pros and cons. That’s a whole different story.
Anyway, I get up with the sun in the morning to get my day started. By early, I mean early. If I didn’t have the sleep schedule of a 97 year-old great grandmother, believe me, I’d try to sleep in a little. But by this point in the summer my body is accustomed to starting my day with a blissful heart attack every morning at 5:30 a.m.
Obviously, I’m not #spons. I don’t get paid to write, and I definitely don’t get paid to write about any products. SO I’m doing this completely pro bono - download the alarm app Carrot Alarm. I have to confess I paid real money for it ($3.99 to be exact - a pretty penny). This bad boy sets up a series of puzzles and tests to wake you up, and doesn’t let you turn it off until you complete it. I have a love hate relationship with this app because it blares and it screams and that nasty little voice in the alarm yells at you to get out of bed. It fricking sucks.
But on the bright side I get up so aggressively that I’m completely wide awake by the time I’m standing pounding on my phone trying to turn it off as the blood vessels in my head pop. The rest of my morning routine is pretty uneventful and I’m out the door by 7:40.
To get to the office, I walk half a mile from my house to the train station, take a thirty minute ride downtown and walk another mile to work. I usually listen a whole slew of podcasts, (if you’re in the market, Chris D’Elia’s Congratulations, Nicole Byer’s Why Won’t You Date Me, WSJ’s Secrets of Successful Women and Serial have all been on my radar recently) and press play when I leave my house until I reach the front door of the office.
I love getting time to learn a little about the world, a little time to myself on the commute or to play one of my beautifully and dramatically curated playlists on Spotify. I swear, in a past life I must have been a DJ.
Here’s the kicker. Or I guess the punch. Or more literally - the sign. I was in the midst of the second leg of my daily journal and was switching podcasts and walked face first into a sign on the streets of Chicago. It wasn’t a physically traumatic experience because I looked up just as it was happening.
My dignity did take a blow, however.
It was after this little run in (literally) that I realized how much social interaction (and obstacles) I was missing on my way to work every day. And the fact that by the time I made it to the office my phone was basically dead. I was always in such a rush moving from point A to point B when I had my headphones in because I didn’t need to really hear the outside world.
The next week I did a little ~ social experiment ~ to test this. I *GASP* left my headphones in my bag until I got to the office. I know - my skin is crawling just thinking about it. Social interaction with strangers?? You’ve got to be kidding me.
I was really disappointed.
The first walk to the train station was so pleasant. Here I am, walking through the crisp morning air thinking to myself Wow I have my shit together - I’m so zen I don’t use technology anymore. SO off the grid. I passed a mom running with her daughter in a stroller and smiled at them - how friendly. So philanthropic. What a good suburbanite.
Yet, when I got on the train and sat down it was silent. I was sitting next to a man around my age in the back row facing the direction we were going, and there was not a voice to be heard on the train. It absolutely sent shivers down my spine (I know that sounds dramatic but sitting in silence with forty other people on a train kind of rocks you).
I twiddled my thumbs a little bit and look around and drank my coffee and picked at my cuticles and twirled my hair for the thirty minute ride and got the hell out of there the second the doors opened. As I was leaving, the man in front of me held the door for me, so as any stand up citizen of the city of Chicago does, I thanked him.
He didn’t hear me. And I would bet the $14.37 in my checking account that you know why - he had his headphones in. I had thanked him and smiled and there was no reciprocation in the slightest.
Believe me, I wasn’t looking for validation or a conversation or his phone number, but it really made me realize that there was such a barrier here.
As of June 3, 2018 there are 2,716,450 people in Chicago. That's a lot of people. But when you put up a wall from the rest of the world on your commute to work, there is no lonelier feeling. Even in one of the world’s biggest cities, literally surrounded by millions of people.
After this little epiphany I decided to stop listening to my podcasts on my way to work, and started making casual conversation with the people around me and let me tell you!!!!!! Life is wonderful!!! I hate to be all cheesy here - but realizing that although I can go from my office to the train only listening to my playlists thinking about what I’m doing after work or how many emails I need to keep up on, I’m surrounded by so many other people that are coming from work too.
There are so many people around you that have important and insightful things to say. Yet we block them out. A friend told me recently that at the corner of every intersection in Chicago he’ll look up to the top floors of the skyscrapers around him.
Not to think to himself, Oh damn those are nice wow I wish I lived there, or to play the role of the neighborhood peeping Tom, but more of a thoughtful second to ground yourself a little bit. By looking around and recognizing - oh shit maybe everything isn’t about me?? Are you kidding?? It puts everything in perspective.
We’re so encompassed in our daily lives - I’m guilty of it. Everyone is. That we completely forget that there are other people out there too. Someone just got proposed to. Promoted. Fired. Made ramen. Went on a bike ride. Got their scuba license. Shaved their legs. Broken up with. Won the lottery.
Every second. One of these happens. We forgot the sun doesn’t revolve around us - and having those little bits of social interactions every day is a constant reminder.
Your phone is your crutch. Put it away and learn about other people around you. Be uncomfortable. The world kind of really sucks today, make a little conversation. It helps.
xoxo,
s
Samantha Miller (@samantharachelmiller) is a freelance writer from Chicago. She prides herself on her occasional wit, her keen eye for design and her undying love for iced almond milk lattes.
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