Instead of looking downwards, look up and SING!
Every day on the underground I sing. I sing because I like singing and because I like to see the shocked look of other commuters as I blare out Jesus songs on a packed train. I smile as I sing. I smile as I sing because music makes me happy, and when I’m happy I smile. I also smile because hardly anybody else smiles. Did you ever notice? When you look at someone they usually look down with an embarrassed expression on their faces, or they quickly glimpse sideways and pretend not to have seen you. On the rare occasion, eyes will meet and the stranger will reciprocate with a smile, but that is rare.
These days our faces are turned towards the ground, or towards a telephone screen. We have lost the art of looking up towards the sky, or of looking at one another. We have forgotten that we were created to reach to the heavens, rather than stare to our feet, as if in shame or fear. Our faces bear the scars of lives lived to survive the week; to make enough money to pay our rent or possibly the mortgage, buy food, pay the bills and repay our loans, all the while longing for the weekend to come when we can enjoy what little free time we are afforded, by jobs most of us don’t enjoy, engaging in hobbies that we hope will help us relax from the jobs we don’t enjoy, or getting smashed off our heads in order to forget the jobs we don’t enjoy.
We walk around in a trance, which solidifies our illusions and makes them seem real. Many have lives too grim to think about, so we create pleasures to ease our burdens and to give us a sense that we are actually enjoying our existence; though we know that we’d much rather be somewhere else.
It is a modern paradox that at the same time as we are entrenched in the rat race, we justify our participation in the rat race and uphold the masquerade that we are actually quite enjoying it; because not to do so would mean admitting that we truly are madder than ever.
How mad are you?
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