Some things come from nothing..

..Nothing seems to come from something.


Last Saturday, I had a lunch break from work and no one to spend it with. However, this was not a problem, as I like sitting by myself and contemplating things on my lunch breaks, I'm so tired that I need to rest everything, including my brain, to stop myself from spewing a garbled mish mash of nonsense at customers for the next four hours. So that's what I did this lunchtime; I got myself a bottle of Vitamin Water and a small chocolate bar (I hadn't been really eating, this seemed adequate for lunch) and walked to Christ's Pieces, where I headed straight across the grass to the nearest bench in sight with no one occupying it. The bench was the opposite side of the park to where I usually sit, and gave a whole new perspective to the scene. A group of what I assumed to be Chinese people were sitting in front of me, and I found that my eyes kept coming to rest on one man in particular. Unfortunately, this was not because he was amazingly attractive or anything interesting like that, he was simply eating some takeaway food from a tin tray and in my hungry state (which, of course, I tried to tell myself I wasn't), I found it hard to look away. He looked back at me a few times, and I thought to myself, I'll just let him think I'm staring at him, not the food. Free ego booster. After a while of people-watching and just sitting thinking, absentmindedly texting simultaneously, an old man came to sit next to me. Having been alone on my seat before, I was sitting in a reasonably central position, and this meant that my new companion was sitting quite close to me, and I felt slightly uncomfortable. Despite this, I held my ground and continued sitting, still trying to relish this alone time which had suddenly become not so much alone. At first, I wanted him to leave, feeling almost angry at the intrusion, but this soon subsided. It was surprisingly replaced with an overwhelming desire to talk to him. I noticed that he was drawing, and took a sly glance at the picture. It was a stylised illustration of the group of people laughing and eating lunch in front of us. Every atom in me screamed to say something. A comment about the unusual weather. A compliment on the drawing. Anything. But I didn't. I sat in silence until five minutes before I had to be back at work, then stood up, acting like this artist next to me did not exist. Someone who shared one of my greatest passions. Someone who may have proved to be an excellent conversationalist, or an introvert whose day I could have brightened by making a passing comment. But I'll never know. And I thought to myself as I walked slowly back to work, it's so sad that we live in a society where two people can be placed in such close proximity and not pass a single word, not even an acknowledgement of the other human being living and breathing beside them.

Just a thought.