Oh, To Be Alive

It hit me in the most ordinary moment: sitting on the metro, headphones in, pretending I wasn’t there.

That’s what we do, right? We board the train, pull ourselves inward, and wear our public faces. Not angry, not sad: just blank enough to disappear. A silent agreement: don’t look at me, I won’t look at you.

I was in that mode, halfway between nowhere and wherever, when I saw her. The girl across from me, head leaning against the window, lips moving faintly. It took me a second to register what she was doing, mouthing the lyrics to a song I knew too well.

The same song that was in my ears.

I froze for a moment, startled by the strangeness of it. Like Him, Tyler, the Creator. Same words, same rhythm, the same quiet pull of the music. Two strangers, moving in sync without realizing it.

And then I saw him.

The man standing by the door, gripping the pole with one hand, his laptop bag slung over his shoulder. I didn’t think twice about it until I noticed the details, the same brand, the same fraying edge, the same faint scratches as mine. It was identical, down to the wear-and-tear.

And then her. The woman next to me adjusting a floral headband, one I recognized instantly. Not similar, the same. A print stitched into a blouse hanging in my closet, one I’ve worn more times than I can count.

These were small things. A song, a bag, a headband. Trivial, almost. But they felt like more. Like the universe had leaned in close and whispered, Look.

So I did.

I started noticing everything. The boy in the corner, gripping a paperback so tightly the pages bent under his fingers. The older man by the pole, his hands trembling, holding on as if the motion of the train might knock him loose. The teenager scrolling through her phone, her face blank, her thumb moving with a rhythm that felt far too familiar.

And suddenly, I couldn’t stop wondering: What don’t I see?

How many of these people have cried like I’ve cried, sitting alone in a room that feels too quiet? Who here has been gutted by a loss they still can’t explain, carrying that grief in the space between breaths? Who here has felt joy so sharp it almost hurt, the kind of joy that makes you laugh at the sheer aliveness of it?

I wondered who in that car had loved someone so deeply they were willing to break themselves for it. Who had woken up this morning feeling like they didn’t belong, like the world had no space for them, and still showed up anyway.

It was unbearable. This sudden awareness that every single person around me was living a life as complicated, as full, as vast as my own. Entire universes, tucked inside strangers, colliding for a handful of stops before disappearing into the flow of the city.

The train pulled to a stop, and they left. One by one, slipping away: the girl mouthing Tyler’s lyrics, the man with my laptop bag, the woman with the headband. None of them looked back.

And yet, they stayed with me.

I sat there, stunned by the weight of it all: this endless, invisible web we’re part of. Most days, we walk around pretending we’re separate. That we’re alone in our joy, our heartbreak, our quiet little struggles. But we’re not. We never were.

Everywhere you go, you’re surrounded by people carrying the same emotions, the same small moments of humanity. Someone else has stayed up too late crying over a loss that blindsided them. Someone else has felt the same fleeting joy when the sun pours through the window just right. Someone else has had the same stupid fight with their hair that you had this morning.

We’re all so close to each other, and yet we miss it. We sit next to strangers and never know that they’re just like us. That their lives are as rich, as heavy, as full of contradictions as ours.

I left the train that day feeling something I still don’t have a name for. A mix of wonder and grief. Wonder at how vast and intricate the world is, how tied together we are without ever realizing it. Grief at how much of each other we’ll never see.

It’s impossible to hold it all, this understanding of how deeply connected we are. Maybe that’s why we block it out, why we disappear into ourselves. But every once in a while, the world cracks open and lets you feel it. Lets you know it.

We’ll never fully understand each other. We’ll never see all the hidden lives brushing up against ours. But maybe that’s not the point.

Maybe the point is to notice. To look. To let yourself feel the weight of it, even when it’s overwhelming.

Because in the end, isn’t that what it means to be human? To carry the unbearable and the beautiful all at once? To move through a world where we’re all strangers and somehow, still, profoundly connected?

That day, I didn’t feel small. I felt infinite. And I think, deep down, so did everyone else on that train.