The young woman sat across from me reaches for her phone to capture a picture of the sunrise. I smile, wondering what this makes her think of, if there’s been a specific sunrise in her life which sprung to mind. Perhaps she also just needed to catch a glimpse of the sun today.
I sip my coffee, flinch — should’ve added sugar; clearly overestimated how much of a grown up I am. Evidently, a switch to black coffee is not on the horizon for me.
I notice, as the woman puts her phone back in her rucksack, that she doesn’t have a coffee in her hand. I glance around; not a single person around us is holding a takeaway coffee cup, not even a flask in sight.
Has every London commuter agreed to snort cocaine for breakfast this morning, leaving me out of this memo? That can be the only reason for everybody looking so much more awake than me at eight in the morning.
I used to hate these questions. Not that particular, cocaine-specific one, although it did occur to me fairly often — mostly in the university library, in the days I had specially dragged myself there to write my dissertation during daylight hours, as opposed to remaining a permanently nocturnal beast. I could never comprehend why I was the only one, out of the hundreds of students in the room, who looked on the brink of death, barely able to keep my eyes open at the desk as I opened up yet another translation of The Odyssey.
Hence, the coffee dependency entered my life — and the realisation I have quite a dramatic iron deficiency.
But cocaine and coffee aren’t a haunting question; not the haunting question, anyway. That one has never really been articulated, despite the two decades you have had to mull over it, craft it into the intimidating beast it has become: The Question. What is it, this big question?
For context, I was a very introspective, existentialist small child — unfortunately, not in the prodigal, impending genius sense; more in the rapidly developing anxiety disorder kind of way.
I have an abundance of childhood memories of my very young self questioning how this worked, staring into a mirror like a defenceless dog which has just gained that all too horrifying human consciousness, questioning how this all works. How did we all have our own psyche, what was it which made us “us” — which higher power could have possibly created all this, for this level of complexity could not possibly be explained by science; even the concept of magic wasn’t cutting it.
Who, or what, had made this happen? Who was in charge of destiny, because it could not all be random, not a single moment of this by chance.
Perhaps this is why I cannot condone drug use — it was never a moral stance at all, not related to healthy choices. Maybe my brain could simply not bear to sit around my university halls surrounded by a bunch of stoners contemplating these very thoughts; men in their twenties having an epiphany which was visibly blowing their minds, brand new, groundbreaking thoughts for them which I had already overcome by the age of five.
Or perhaps I just realised, very quickly, that marijuana did not bode well with that aforementioned anxiety disorder.
I used to hate these questions, these thoughts. I did not like the idea we were all experiencing our own debilitating, distressing thoughts about our own mortality; yet nobody was discussing it, for I was never able to begin articulating what I found so concerning about this. I recall looking around my classroom, wondering if everybody else had realised the trick we had gotten ourselves into within this universe, praying one of my friends would bring it up to me first so I could stop panicking I was alone in these thoughts.
Now, two decades later, I choose — arguably, force — myself to see the beauty in this; the comfort we do indeed all have those complicated, unnerving thoughts, the endless fears and questions about our own mortality. I wish my younger self could take some comfort in this, but in all honesty; no, your friends probably aren’t conjuring up these concerns about their imminent death just yet, because you are four years old. But keep your head up, kid; you will survive your childhood without any official diagnosis.
I still fear it deeply, the Big Question I refuse to articulate, the answer nobody alive can ever truly give us; no matter how much we study and theorise, how much we question the brightest minds on our planet; we will always be blind, aware this is an unknown throughout our entire lifetime.
I would argue I would be crazier if I didn’t think I was going to spiral when these thoughts occur during my Thursday morning commute, all because I forgot to put that damn sugar in my coffee.
But I can remind myself to see that beauty, all the good. It is a blessing, to love life so much you cannot help but fear the unknown; only a power, never a weakness, in feeling as deeply as you do, caring so intently.
The train is delayed; this is the third time this month. It is not a good look, knowing I will now be five minutes late to the office again, but I reason I cannot control these delays, the backlog of trains in transit.
The coffee is bad and the train is delayed, but it doesn’t matter. I take another sip and continue to watch the sun rise.
These are the moments you remember.
You smile, the sentiment of an old friend crossing your mind. He had said it as a group of us were walking down the street after leaving a house party — if it could have been referred to as such. We were there for approximately ten minutes maximum, and it had been so utterly painful, I was milliseconds away from smashing the fire alarm and forcing everybody to evacuate. Thankfully, a mutual of ours was blacked out on the stairs, vomiting everywhere — Lord knows how he managed to have so much fun in this deeply uncomfortable house; I recall envying his pale corpse and wishing my Saturday night had been that eventful. Potentially too gleefully, the group of us offered to carry him home to safety, a moral and selfless way to escape such a dire night.
Cackling about the array of deeply awkward and confusing situations our friends had somehow managed to get themselves into within ten minutes of being in the house, not even having taken their coats off; we were all deathly sober, carrying our feeble mutual to safety, universally agreeing to give up on the night and order a takeaway after dropping him back home.
As we discussed the takeaway options in depth, a fox walked across the street — so calm, entirely unbothered, as if there were not seven of you stood there (eight, including the corpse), silent, staring at its beauty.
These are the moments you remember. Not the big nights out clubbing, but these small moments with your friends.
He very well might not have thought once about these words since he uttered them — the reminder I cannot even ask him cannot help but cross my mind; that bittersweet feeling of losing touch with someone always momentarily painful — but even so, the sentiment occurs to me every so often. I can hear him say it every time I have the privilege of spotting a fox somewhere in the wild, that uncanny sight of them crossing a road in a suburban street without a care in the world will never not surprise me, and will never not make me question, just for a moment, whether they are following me, if the Hot Priest and I possess the same fate.
Those moments which seem like nothing at the time, I have come to realise, can never truly be “nothing” — I feel the concept itself may not be probable, might not exist at all. Nothing can ever be nothing, not truly, not as an indefinite pronoun nor an adverb; there is no such thing as nothingness in this world.
Is this realisation a blessing or a curse for somebody who wants to attribute meaning to everything, someone who longs for every moment to be special. It begs the question, how can every day, every moment, be special — if they were, surely “special” itself becomes redundant, rendered as meaningless a concept as “nothing”?
But how else could we classify “special”, set these moments apart from the ordinary, decipher which memories warrant this descriptor, can be considered superior to those every day moments of beauty?
This occurs to me as I talk about my summer plans, talking about my impending trip to Ibiza with my best friend. When I mention this trip, I am reminded by others that we do not need the party island: “you two could have the most fun in the world in Scunthorpe”.
I know this is true — although we have not yet ventured to Scunthorpe, I am certain this conclusion is correct; we could bring the party to them.
From our February trip to Bournemouth, where we wore skirts and bought donuts and ice cream, insisting to horrified passerbys that “summertime has arrived!”, to the hysterical laughs we have shared in Birmingham town centre, a place which should trigger an impending fear of mortality more than anywhere else; I am aware this fear would not occur to me, not ever, as long as I have my friend by my side.
The large coffee without sugar isn’t so bad. As I watch the sunrise, the train still not moving, I think of my grandmother. This year is the first time my my grandma, at eighty four years old, will ever set foot on a plane. For a woman who was once fearful of putting lettuce on a burger, considering it too adventurous; this is a mighty step, one I am so proud of. Every time I think of this, I remind myself to never, ever take any of it for granted.
The fortune, the very privilege of travel, this ability to see the world with all my freedom. None of it, none of those moments, will ever be lost on me.
These are the moments you remember.
The magnificent scenery of Iceland, considered by so many people as their ultimate dream destination. Those sights will never fade; the view of the mountains in the distance, emerging from behind the mist, rising with the sun, the crashing waves of the ferocious Atlantic, that feeling of the snow falling as I stepped out the airport. Whilst all of it remains, it is the taste of that coffee I had in that small cafe in Reykjavík which lingers, the sound of the music they blared, seemingly having got their hands on my own personal 2010s pop punk playlist.
Although I have explored more of Croatia than anyone I know, and the memory of the sunset from the Castle viewpoint in Hvar remains vivid; it fades in contrast to the hours spent playing cards on the boat, becoming increasingly infuriated that nobody could grasp the basic rules of Chase the Ace. The cable cars in Dubrovnik pale in comparison to the feeling of my heart racing as we fled the Air BnB in Split which was undoubtedly a brothel, terrified the owner was going to chase down our getaway car and demand the hundreds of Euros owed; my friends vowing to never let me book accommodation ever again once we were safely in a new hotel. Whilst clubbing in a cave in Makarska is cool, the music will never be as good as my own aux. Those hours I spent as Passenger Princess come DJ as my friend drove us from Novalja all the way to Zadar, screeching along to the Jonas Brothers even louder than I screeched when I was forced to remind her they drive on the right side of the road in Croatia.
Whilst I could never forget dancing in a crowd, chanting along as Post Malone and Calvin Harris took to the stage; we never laughed harder than we did in those moments in between. The hours spent by the tent, prodding at our campfire and questioning how another one of our camping chairs could possibly have been stolen, debating how long we had all been staring at our neighbouring tent, attempting to uncover what the fuck the dynamic could possibly be between the two awkward bros and one their uncomfortable girlfriend’s. Due Lipa’s set was exceptional, but this interaction brought us the most usexy edition of Challengers imaginable, three years before Zendaya had even read the script.
I always longed to do it all. I feared I would not see everything, panicked I was endlessly running out of time, all too aware us mortals do not have time to experience it all, terrified I was wasting any spare second I was not discovering, uncovering something new.
How fortunate am I to have these fears? Blessed to live in a world so vast, I could choose to uproot this second, dedicate every remaining second of my life to exploring it, and I would still never be able to discover a percentile of it. Gifted to have spent my life surrounded by people, past and present, so wonderful all those seemingly unimportant memories, all that “nothingness”, has remained with me. How incredible, that I was granted a small purpose in this endless universe, that I have been grounded in such a special little life.
The train begins to move again. I listen to the music in my earphones, the song I have on repeat, taking in the lyrics.
That human wonder, the inability to be truly, completely original. How fortunate are we to bask in these words, all the music on this planet, capturing every single one of our feelings? Music, poetry, literature — its ability to cut so deeply, hit the sharpest nerves, the sheer privilege of being able to feel such pain, empathise with something so very human.
The notion of unoriginality no longer a plight, a fear haunting my waking moments, but a blessing. A confirmation we all feel the same; we will all, always, need each other.
I take another quick glance at the people surrounding me as I reach my stop. This contraption, filled to the brim with hundreds of fascinating, complicated people all learning to live, creating their own stories, their own moments of special nothingness.
GLJTravels is a free publication. But if you’d like to support me and my writing, you can consider buying me a coffee (don’t worry, I’ll make sure to add sugar) :)
In case you needed another reminder to watch the sunrise:
so beautiful i love this i love your writing thank you 🥹 the flow and sharing of emotions were done so well and it felt like i was reading a short story!! BEAUTIFUL 🤍
I feel like every morning on my commute I get existential so this made me feel less alone, your writing is gorgeous