Early in the morning, when the train door just opened, the crowd poured out like broken riverbanks. No one looked at anyone, no one stopped. They walked so fast that if you stood still for a few seconds, you immediately became an obstacle. Modern cities operate thanks to people who know how to blend into the flow.
Life needs links that know how to move in sync, arrive on time and fulfill responsibilities. But late at night, when the last train leaves the station, only a few sanitation workers quietly push the cart, a man sits looking into the distance, and a girl pulls a suitcase with the sound of wheels echoing throughout the corridor. Shinjuku at this time is a stage after the play ends. The crowd disappears, leaving only the people and the original loneliness.
Is it possible that each of us is living by two selves: one to blend into the flow, and one to step out of it. The first selve helps us survive, wake up every morning, pay bills, take care of our families and not be left behind.
And the second identity, is the person standing on the side of the station platform to watch trains coming and going, looking at strange faces, and looking back at themselves. Not to run away, but not to be dissolved in the crowd.
Because people cannot live forever in noise, nor can they exist forever in solitude. The most difficult thing is not to integrate or separate, but to know when to do what. Like a train, sometimes it has to rush at Shinkansen speed, sometimes it has to stop at a small station in the middle of the night for passengers to get off the train and the train driver to rest.
Growing up is when we learn how to harmonize those two selves. One person walks in the crowd, and one person stands in the mind quietly observing. So as not to be excluded from life, but also not to lose ourselves.
Like Japanese train stations, daytime belongs to millions of footsteps, nighttime belongs to silence. That rotation creates their beauty. Humans are also like that! Our value is not only determined by the busyness of going back and forth, but also by the moment we dare to stand in the middle of our life's train station, to ask ourselves: Is the train we are traveling on really the place our heart wants to go?
