The Stories We Tell / 003

He sipped his coffee- bitter & black.

Headphones blasting rock he leaned back and stretched, taking a moment for himself. He watched the people around him. The baristas doing their best to keep up with the flood of customers.

Pump, pump, push, press, pour, fill, cap, repeat.

The mother bouncing her child on her lap while skillfully sipping on a peppermint latte. The others like him — heads down, shoulders hunched, staring at some seemingly important collection of pixels on a screen.

They were all so busy living. So delightfully busy living.

It was his private, fleeting moment. A moment of realization that people had lived for centuries before him, and that people would, centuries after, keep living. It was both a feeling of immense relief as well as profound insignificance.

The weight of existence suddenly seemed overwhelming and he found himself unable to get back to his coffee and powerpoint. He grabbed his things, shoving them in his shoulder bag and made a beeline for the exit. He pushed his way into the mid afternoon crowd- the mothers, the sons, the brothers, the grandmothers. The painters, the carpenters, the coders, the singers. The songwriters, the playwrights, the scientists, the police officers. The lovers, the heartbroken, the racists, the survivors.

People. It was all about people. It has always been about people. And it will always be about people. And in this realization he took comfort- that his insignificance was not special. That no matter how much he tried, no matter how hard he worked, he would be but a drop in the ocean of life. And that was okay.