I walked through Glasgow’s West End today with not much purpose beyond upping my step count (and getting a sweet treat). It was a beautiful day, which is rare for Scotland, so the streets were a lot busier than usual. The usual hustle and bustle of cafes had spilled out onto the streets and all of the outdoor seating was packed. People sipped iced drinks, runners looked extra red and shops emptied as everyone attempted to make the most of the heat. Everyone seemed in their own little world. I wandered amongst the crowds, trying to decide where to grab a coffee from.
Then I had a thought.
Every face I passed belonged to a life I would never fully know. Every stranger carried memories, ambitious, regrets, routines, disappointments, private jokes, fears, hobbies, people they love and people they lost. Some may have been celebrating something today. Others may be quietly enduring the worst day of their lives. From the outside, they all looked like people walking down the street.
It hit me that consciousness is perhaps the strangest thing we ever experience. Every single one of us occupies a different point of view. We are all convinced that our story sits at the centre of reality. Yet, all around us, everywhere we look, is a different version of reality, each just as complete, complex and convinced that they are the ones looking out into the world.
We move through life believing our stories only belong to us and, in a way, they do. But every day, without realising it, our lives touch and shape one another. A kind comment from a stranger can change someone’s whole day. A missed train can bring two people together who otherwise would have never met. A small overheard conversation in a cafe can plant a thought that grows into a life-changing idea.
Most of the ways we affect each other are invisible. We leave small pieces of ourselves behind whenever we go-a smile, a memory, a moment of kindness, a simple please and thank you (no I’m not trying to school you on manners)-and we carry pieces of others with us too. We all like to think of ourselves as separate, but perhaps we are all connected in ways we cannot see.
Maybe consciousness is not just something we experience alone. Maybe it is also the countless ways our thoughts, feelings and actions meet and move through the world around us.
The strange and beautiful thing is that we spend our lives writing our own stories, never knowing how many times we appear in someone else’s.
Beneath the Surface 