My métro ride

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is the famous author of "Le Petit Prince"... and even though this is essentially a book for children, he makes some incredible statements about life and human nature: «On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux», or we cannot see well except with the heart, the essential is invisible to the eyes...

Every morning, I have this routine of getting ready to work, only that these days it's been altered a little bit due to the heavy snow and a bad cold that knocked me down completely for a couple of days. While in bed, my car got stock under a couple of feet of snow with no hopes of being able to put it on the road until the spring. So, I decided to let the car sit there in the backyard, I bought a bus pass and been taking the Métro (or subway) since.

When I get to the Métro station, I pick up a copy of the underground daily, and proceed to scan the news. This has been a renaissance for me in terms of gaining awareness of current events going on around the world. I admit... and I feel guilty for being so shallow as not to pay attention to the horror of the wars going on these days. So, my guilt feeds my curiosity for news, and I've been reading with more interest every day.

I get easily distracted though... when I get on, I look at the people around me. I like the feeling of being so close to others, and I love to see people's reactions to physical contact. It seems everyone enjoys getting on a packed wagon, and it's sweet to see people smiling, especially when you brush elbows with somebody really cute. This is fun, more so than when people spread apart trying to maximize their distance from everyone else. It makes me think that we all need a little bit of that human touch coming from strangers, I imagine the fantasies getting constructed in people's heads, and getting on the Métro is the perfect medium to engage in an exercise of heightened sensuality.

So, my ride takes about 30 minutes, and during that time, I read everything that I can on the latest calamity. I even read comments from ordinary people who are courageous enough to offer an opinion, and I say courageous because these days, it seems we have been getting into a cathatonic state when it comes to conflict. We abhor it, we do everything to avoid it and we run away if we ever encounter it. It's so much easier to have a good time, listen to your iPod while you ride to work, or simply read a book about fiction.

So, now I'm making an effort to offer an opinion, as poor as it may be, hoping that this will help me to develop a better sense of the events, trying to engage myself in what's happening while barely grasping the complexity of the world around me. So, I try, and I try hard... and I feel Saint-Exupéry was referring to me when he said «la vérité de demain se nourrit de l’erreur d’hier», a very elegant way of implying that we can only reach a truth if we learn from our past mistakes.