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Saturday, April 01, 2017
[The masks we wear...]
I spend most of my time on crowded trains during my commute to and from work. Usually I’ll try to get some things done during that time, like check my social media accounts or read the newspaper on my iPad.
Sometimes I look at other commuters and wonder what kind of lives they have. When we’re on the train, we’re all equals. We pay the same fare and we either stand or sit until we reach our destination. Nobody cares who you are or what your station in life is. On the train, you are no different from anyone else. You could be the office cleaner or the CEO, no one cares.
These days, with phone screens getting bigger and bigger and with trains getting more and more packed, I sometimes stand close enough to someone to see what they’re doing on their phones. People really should be more careful about this. That’s why I use a rather-expensive privacy screen protector (from 3M, not one of those crap ones that just darkens the screen) on my phone.
Earlier this week, I caught a glimpse of what this middle-aged woman was doing on her phone. It was peculiar, which was what caught my attention in the first place. She was using a messaging app but clearly it was a one-way chat. All the messages were being sent by her and the recipient has not replied even once.
As I scanned through the content of the messages, I picked up on what’s happening. She’s messaging her son and it looks like they have a strained relationship. There were messages asking him where he was, asking how was he, asking whether he’s coming to the wake (looks like there was a recent death in the family), that she and his father loves him, asking him to come back home, asking him whether he was still at SMU.
I spent less than 30 seconds looking at her screen and I got all that. Clearly her life is not a bed of roses.
I think this applies to all of us. We go to work, we see our colleagues. But we have no idea what happened to our colleagues just before they came into the office. They may have problems at home or in other aspects of their lives that they are dealing with. But they put on a brave face, a mask, and come to work as if nothing’s wrong.
Life is hard. But without hard times, we won’t appreciate the good times. Without sadness, we wouldn’t treasure the happy times. Babies are born and old people die. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I guess this applies emotionally as well.
^^^ by Locksley @ 7:09 PM.
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