Little Things

A friend of mine once tried to explain to me the importance of watching people. He spoke about the wealth of information one can gain from wordlessly watching people when they are unaware.

I started out watching a silver-haired couple who I was pretty sure wouldn’t know I was watching them. Even though the atmosphere around them is abuzz with the chatter of fellow bus riders they are so involved with each other having a conversation with their hands clasped together that I don’t think they’d have noticed if the roof of the bus just up and blew off.

Next I notice a young girl looking out the window. I would have failed to notice her at all, but for the intense look of concentration scrunching up her brows. After what seems like a long time, she pulls a shiny leather sketch pad from her bag and begins to draw. She  draws a series of delicate pencil strokes and as she does, she smiles slightly and her wrinkly brow begins to smooth out. This girl is an artist who was in need of release and she had found it.

The little girl with the big blue eyes was my favourite. However it wasn’t  just her eyes that drew me to her, it was the way she used them to plead with her grandmother.

“Please can we play?” she begged. “I want to play Rock Paper Scissors!”

I heard the little girl’s grandmother, a fragile woman with white hair, tell her she didn’t know how to play. The admission doesn’t seem to daunt the little girl who takes the old woman’s hands in her younger, smaller ones and gently shapes her fingers into the appropriate shapes for the game. It takes her a few tries, but soon she is just us giggly as the little girl over the game.

One by one they left me, the couple in love, still gazing only at each other, the artist now with a full canvas and the little girl and her grandmother who had finished their game for the time being.

As they got off the bus, I begin to feel disapointed in my little experiment. I watched these people as closely as I could, and I don’t  feel like I know them any better than before I laid eyes on them. Sure, I learned little facts, but I can’t say I came across any of the special information mentioned by my friend.

That’s when it hit me.

A person is a series of seemingly insignificant facts and the only chance one has to make his or her mark on the world and people around them, is through these facts. It’s important to be aware of the things we say and do when we don’t think anybody’s listening. It is only those things that will show the world who we really are.