To The neighbors I would never meet
I am sitting on my couch, on a Thursday evening. Staring out of the window, I see hundreds or maybe thousands of other windows. Somewhere I can see a dimly lit kitchen, somewhere a big screened television, somewhere the lights are out, somewhere there are human figures moving around, some cleaning, some cooking, some talking. All of them are my neighbors, we clearly live in the same neighborhood, we walk the same streets, shop at the same grocery store, but I will never recognize any of them if our paths cross. I would love to say Hi if I see them on streets, but the beauty or sadness of city life is although we are so close we can see through the glass walls of our homes yet we are far away to ever see the human inside those glass walls. We can relate with their daily actions, with their mundane routines but we can never identify each other in proximity. The distances are less, apartments are close but the humans are farthest ever possible. We are neighbors, but we will never know each other’s face, we will never identify each other on the streets. This is the irony of big cities, you know so many people are with you, you just don’t know those people.
