I step aside

There are rare times, when it is possible to avoid the everyday trot and just mentally let go. Sadly those are few and far between. One of the possibilities is while traveling, for as a traveller you are more or less forced to leave your daily worries behind.

Trains are great. After the initial stress of finding out of home, getting to the station on time and fighting over your paid reservations in a silent zone, one can finally nest in his seat, spread stuff on the table, take a deep breath…and peacefully listen to other people’s phone conversations. Those one can usually sum up with Martin Heidegger’s famous question “ Why is there “Being” instead of “Nothing?” Not that I have any choice. When the person next to me seems to successfully turn his lengthy conversation about Nothing into a “Being” with shape and density I feel I could easily kick him under the table. Oh, to him it is definitely Something, even if he cannot immediately do anything to affect the happening, so I get my earplugs out so I can think. That is allowed in a silent zone.

Hordes of people, much cleverer that myself, have dealt with the question of Being, the eternal problem. Nitsche once described it as a problem simultaneously concerning an elephant grazing somewhere in the forest of India and a chemical heat process on Mars. Once it becomes clear that this is an understatement in itself, lots of other things tend to become blur. Like hectic. There must be a reason why stress makes us sick. Something should. Otherwise we would live forever and this is not foreseen. The grain of sand, which is our planet in the Universe, has space for only limited amount of inhabitants. No matter how clever we will get, no matter how advanced, we still have to make space for others. And so as medicine and science progress, we humans stay the same, with only scant adjustments from the point of view of the evolution. And despite all the clever tricks we invent to cheat time, nature doesn’t care. Time, although a term invented by us to measure how long we have got left, mercilessly goes by and eventually, brings everything into perspective.

I am sure, my grandmother, and hers too, had loved, were afraid, cared and hated. Yet all those things that were their emotions and anxieties have disappeared without a trace. Everything they deemed important and held sacred had seized to be. Today I am. What moves me leaves my children indifferent. Would it change if I stepped aside and just watched it go by? I tell myself that it would, but is it really so? I tell myself that I make a difference. The guy next to me does too. Should I tell him that it’s not true? I step aside.