You’re on a subway train in the city. It’s a crowded, bustling weekday morning at 7am. People are boarding at every stop, hardly taking the time to notice one another.

As people get on, most keep their heads down, headphones in, and stay fixated on a screen, or on the floor, absent from what is around them.

Your stop is the end of the line, meaning you’ll likely be left with just a few people left by the end. Stop after stop, the number of people decreases, as their time has come to disembark. Your awareness of the few that remain starts to pique your interest. You begin to study faces, noticing more details about the once-unfamiliar figures scattered about the train car.

You start to think to yourself – “I wonder if some are getting off at my stop?”

Finally, you strike up the courage to talk to the person nearest you, sitting a few seats over. You ask them where they’re heading, and are delighted when they reveal they are getting off at your stop. You continue to converse, sharing more details about one another in an amicable tone. You’ve established commonality through your shared outcome, and have become more open with one another.

After a time, your stop is called, you say goodbye, and part ways, never to meet again.

This is the narrative of life itself. Until the end of the journey is near, we are concerned largely for ourselves and fail to notice others. We only begin to notice them as fewer and fewer, and our stop will soon be called.

The train travels in a linear fashion you see. And each stop is the final stop for someone. A moment in time when an individual must get off, and each stop is along the same street. To take notice of those who remain near the end of your journey is the way of things.

No matter where we boarded, will all eventually disembark at Mori Avenue.