Shared Space

One thing I love about living in the city is that I am constantly reminded that I am in a shared space. The 'space' where I live, work, shop, walk, force me to realize that I do not live in my own world, and that I'm definitely not the center of it. Every morning we take public transportation to work. Together we ride the El (Chicago's subway system), and then I hop onto a bus while Mark stays on the train for a bit longer. We've settled into a reasonable morning routine, which usually includes scarfing down an egg-in-a-hole while walking, eating a mini-Altoid once we get on the train, and fighting through the crowd to give a quick good-bye kiss. It's just what we do. And our mundane routine intersects and interacts with surrounding strangers every morning. Of course, I assume that no one pays attention to us. But the truth is, watching The New DeLews' routine may have become part of someone else's daily routine. Now I know that sounds creepy or maybe narcissistic, but hear me out. As we settle into the normalcy of our lives, we start to take notice of subtleties. There are certain people at my bus stop that I see every morning. I know which bus they take, I recognize their winter coat, I observe their routine- but I don't know who they are. One day a woman came up to me and said "I am always so relieved when I see you at the bus stop because I know that I didn't miss my bus!". She knew my routine, and yet I had never seen her before.

Our lives are constantly intersecting with other people's lives, and it's on public transporation that I'm most aware of this. We can try to pretend that we're in our own worlds by reading or listening to music. But at some point, our 'world' is disrupted by a stranger, a fellow traveler. Sometimes I wonder where everyone is going. We're all in this one train, heading Northwest, and yet, what are we all doing here? For this brief moment, we are strangers sharing a common space. And in some distant way, we have a random connection to each other.

I sensed this 'random connection' very strongly when my plane got stranded in Dakar, Senegal for 72 hours. I was on my way to Zambia alone, and lo and behold, my plane broke down on the tarmac in West Africa. Suddenly I found myself walking through the streets of Dakar to a hotel with 200 other passengers- all strangers. And yet suddenly, our mundane commonality of being on the same airplane turned into a connection. The 200 passengers started to watch out for each other. One lady from Malawi gave me a $20 bill (because I had decided to travel 10,000 miles without cash- who am I??). I felt like I was on LOST the whole time, but really, I became so aware of the connection that resulted from our mundane plane ride.

As it's our human tendency to think that we're the center of the universe, I am thankful that I am forced/given the opportunity to look beyond myself every day and remember that we live in shared space. I have no idea if I will ever see the person next to me again, and I have no idea where they are going or what they're thinking. And yet, we're on the same train. It's mundane, routine, and normal. But there is significance and beauty in the mundane and the 'sharedness' of our lives.