The Rooms We Live In

Today, I was at a lobby of a well-renowned hospital in the western suburbs, waiting for a process to complete. In those few minutes, I found myself observing the people around me. Almost every face carried a quiet helplessness. A heaviness. A certain stillness that only comes when someone near/dear is admitted for some treatment maybe serious or not so serious, which they cannot help with. 

The hospital staff, on the other hand, were numb towards these emotions. Their faces showed little reaction to the emotions unfolding around them. And I realized it wasn’t indifference. It was simply what happens when one lives this kind of a professional life daily and gets accustomed to human vulnerability. When you witness fear, pain, and hope every day, you learn how to deal without getting affected too much.

What stayed with me was this, the same people who today sat silently in this hospital lobby, would have had entirely different expressions if they were at a mall or a café or a movie theatre. Smiles. Laughter. Lightness.

Human life is a series of shifting rooms. Each room demands a different emotion. A hospital reminds us of fragility. A mall reminds us of fun. A home reminds us of comfort. A workplace reminds us of ambition.

We are all constantly adjusting. Responding. Becoming.

Life does not give us one emotion to live with. It gives us all of them, in rotation. And in that very movement lies the truth of being human.

Tags:

Previous post

A Tiny Setting, A Big Reflection of Personality

Next post

The D2C Sales Illusion: A Rosy Path That Leads Straight to Hell

Share this