I wait for the espresso to kick in, sitting in the cab, driving through this town, an early morning tableau that feels alien enough to give it all a second look but familiar enough to know where I’m going. It does not matter which city I’m staying in—to look at another neighbourhood in the morning hour never fails to knock the wind out of me. I do not walk these streets as often as others, yet I can sense they look different than they usually do in the pale morning light. The morning does not get washed over a city, and the slowness of life beginning to spring back into its zeal and motion is something to watch. This, I recommend as a remedy to most troubles. Watch the morning. Things soon fall into place.
Then, the ride on the morning taxi soon turns into a breakfast, a walk, and a conversation about how things only get better for the world as time moves on. The unparalleled tenacity in humanity today amazes me, and I often get carried away if I begin talking about it. We do not have to look too hard to see that we live with magic around us or closer to us than a stone’s throw. Life is effortless in this time and age, in more ways than we keep a tally of, but humanity’s song has always been that life is hard, and so, we shall consider it so, but it is also better in many ways, more than we can name, more than we realise. I look at the world and carry nothing but respect for it.
In the end, I hope through this day, and many like this one, I have made some impact, that I caused time to ripple over itself, no matter how soft, how undetected it went on its way. In my understated life, perhaps, I, too, have been useful? Perhaps. We can only hope. What our life turns out to be, we cannot say, but we must try to make it count for something. I look at the world, and beyond the thin covers of civilisation’s pretence, underneath religions and borders and other fictitious creations of people who did not have anything better to do, I see people working hard for reasons known and unknown. I count myself in this tribe. I bow down to all those who came before. I hope I can pay it forward in my own way. The rest will go as it goes, as it has in the books of history.