people-watching and a bunch of other mundane things

you don’t have to be doing something everyday on purpose. and lately, i feel like i don’t even have a momentous purpose sometimes.

zoning out on lunch tables, zooming in on the traffic chaos while standing in my pyjamas at sun-down, or just merely sitting in cafes and trying to make sense of everything around. even when i know i absolutely don’t have to. watching people waiting on the signal while adjusting themselves on the seat and checking for any notification they have been anticipating. or sipping americano at starbucks while pretending to be super busy while editing that poster on the second last day to deadline. how everyone has everything to do all at once, yet get nothing done on time. an everyday act of performance of small rituals in the middle of monotonous schedules. this is people-watching for me.

on most days, people-watching is as much about curiosity as about slowing down enough and trying to observe. observe - not just humans around but the chaos that reminds me that i am a human too, i relate to this too, this happens with me too, i do this too, this is me too. there is something so grounding in knowing how no two people at the same place and at the same moment is living and feeling life in exactly the same way. momentary joy but living with past regret or maybe a tough day at work but excited for the dinner with friends after. people around me exist without context. how we comprehend people without knowing their name, their race, ethnicity, voice, mood, age, heartbreaks, ambitions, failures. the way the lady taps her foot while anxiously waits for the bus in a crowd full of strangers, how the old man at the grocery store keeps re-reading the list to make sure he has not forgotten anything, or how the delivery boy sighs relief as he reaches the apartment building after a 2-hour traffic. these small gestures makes you realise how familiar this strange world can be by just being present.

lately, there’s a lot of everyday heavy-lifting of mundane tasks that i have been doing. washing and folding laundry. watering the half dried fittonias. cleaning my shoe rack. and in the middle of it all, i have been observing. the hum of the fan. the dust that never finds it way under the book i haven’t touched lately. how nothing happens and un-happens by chance, and how everything always has a logic ready like burnt toasts in the morning.

it’s funny how we are taught to chase meaning and logic. how everything should be labelled, even moments as productive or wasted. but moments don’t need labels. they need presence. and meanings will find their way in between. or hide somewhere in the way someone buys flowers with no logic or reason, in the trailing conversations at the metro station, the way sunlight moves across the floor, the way i smile at nothing particular. no explanations or comprehensions, but somehow they keep the world spinning.

people-watching for me is a proof that everyone around me is carrying a life as full as mine or maybe heavier than what their backs could hold. and they just leave a fragment of their story and existence in my mind by just being in the same world as mine, at the same place and at the same time. somehow, this makes my own worries smaller and softer around the edges.

not all of us have too much time to pause and observe, and even if we do, not all of us feel the worth in valuing presence over labelling moments. i romanticize boredom for fun. but balancing milestones and pauses is the art of life.

these mundane things don’t change my life dramatically, i don’t even expect them to. but they do remind me that i am already in it, and somehow that’s enough.