lifestyle

I like to watch

I’m not talking about stalking, or invading others privacy.  I am simply talking about watching others as they live out their lives.  If this makes you feel creepy, then I’m sorry, but I’m not unusual, I’m just honest.  As humans we are curious about others.  Some try and hide that curiosity, and others, like me, make the most of it.

I will often use the time that I have available to watch people.  Sometimes this will be watching my daughter playing with her friends, other times it might be watching strangers pushing and shoving over the bargain box at the supermarket.  If I get the chance I love to stand at busy railway stations or crowded intersections and pick up glimpses of how other people are living their lives.  I catch 5 second snapshots of another human beings life and I ponder.  What makes that person tick?  Why does he wear those clothes?  Why is she reading that?  What is he listening to?  Where is she coming from?

You could call this a natural sense of curiosity or maybe it is a hobby of mine.  It isn’t arranged methodically so it could hardly be described as an investigation.  However it is a genuinely instructive exercise.  

I see the lengths that people go to to project their ideal image, and I see dramatic success and failure.  I see people who care how they are seen, people who don’t care how they are seen, and people who want to look like they don’t care how they are seen.  I see, in a crowd, a miniature world made up of a few dozen people.  None of these people see eye to eye on many issues, most of them only walk together in peace because they don’t really know what the other people are truly thinking.   They march along, each with their own agenda, intent on living their lives.  Sometimes their goals collide with another’s, sometimes they cooperate.  More often than not, they seem totally oblivious to the effect that they are having on the world as they race along. 

Watching people is a pure waste of time, if we look at the short term achievement of our goals.  However, if we want to understand people and we see the power of connecting with people it may not be such a waste.  People watching is an absorbing habit, that lets us watch the world from the outside.  We observe, at an arms length, the daily dramas we inherit as humans and we watch as those around us struggle to make their own lives work.  Surely this is worth some time.  Watching, learning, understanding as much as we can.  The world is like a great big scientific experiment if we can stay out of the action and watch it swirl around us.  But don’t get obsessed with it, life isn’t worth much if you are just a spectator, and life in jail is pretty grim if you become a stalker.

Next time you get the oportunity watch the action that surrounds you.  You probably want to anyway, so give in to your curiosity and see what you learn.  But please don’t get caught staring and if anyone asks you, don’t tell them that I like to watch. 

Thanks

Tom