obvious truth:

People come to the city to live their own lives, but the truth is, living in a city this big you’re constantly living everyone else’s. The people pushing past you on the street, the girl talking too loudly on her cell phone on the bus to her friend about how Robert might be “the one,” the group of men discussing their stock options and how they don’t understand why Perry gave the position to her, “what was he thinking?” And the man who I gave my seat to on the subway who was lost on the crowd, unseeing, his white stick out front tapping, tapping and leading the way. “Thank you,” he said and then laughed. “Just when you didn’t think there was anyone nice left in New York.”

I didn’t say anything back, only smiled, and he couldn’t see it.

And it’s not that they’re unkind, it’s that they’re busy living their lives and everyone else’s, that sometimes it becomes too difficult to step outside of that fast moving spinning whirlwind to really see. Because we don’t see. We don’t see clearly the way we might if we knew of an end, an impending doom, a deadline, something that would really push us to make decisions, to make choices, to take action, to own up to our real feelings and passions and thoughts.

We are hovering in a fog of complacency, because each day the alarm rings and the stinging beep beep beep shakes us awake, and each night we set it again and it all repeats, our lives on autopilot. And the girl on the phone will marry Robert, or she’ll walk in on him in bed with her friend and it will all fall apart. And the woman in the office who just got that job will become known as the youngest woman in that office’s history to get such a position, or she’ll be so intimidated by the men and their rising stock (up two point since yesterday) that she’ll give it all up and walk away.

Whole days and weeks and hours pass by and we don’t see a thing.

And the man on the subway, lost and reaching, our Tiresias, the blind soothsayer, seeing all that we cannot, seeing all that we won’t allow ourselves or take the time to, will remain as a reminder.

Because living in this city you’re constantly living everyone else’s lives, and the truth is, before you know it you find that you’ve been bouncing around inside other people’s conversations for so long, that you’ve lost sight of who you really are. So I guess if you're looking for happiness (and I think we all are), it's just beyong the fog.