By Nicolas Kello

I remember walking out of the front door of my building in the mid-morning and being struck by the warm sunlight rays penetrating the crisp and cool air of a late winter day.  The sky was pristine and it’s hues of light blue, strewn with a few delicate brushstrokes of white, seemed to carry with it a sense, both of its utter timelessness, and the freshness and uniqueness of its current formation.  It was a new day, and everything, from the leaves of the trees scintillating in the light, to the purity and clarity in the air, spoke of novelty.   There was a sense that hidden in the playful geometry of shadows and sunlight, pavement and sky, stillness and movement, there lay an infinite array of possibilities - an infinite potential for life and creativity.  I walked to the corner of Harvard and Commonwealth avenues, to wait for the train, a broad smile taking shape on my face, as I greeted the crystalline day with a sense of gratitude and willingness.  It was an utterly invigorating Monday morning.

An almost involuntary desire formed in me, as I boarded the train, to revel in this sense of gratitude and beauty with others.  I looked around, smiling, casually searching for that commiserating smile, but was met with averting eyes, tired, sullen faces, and what seemed to be a thick and viscous air of drudgery, sprinkled with an almost imperceptible layer of anxiety.  I suddenly noticed that to everyone else in the train, it was nothing more than Monday morning – the doldrums of a day lived in that habituated effort of re-encountering the work week.  It seemed that nothing could break this spell of alienation and boredom.

As the train made its next stop, the doors opened mechanically and people walked in just as mechanically.  Caught in the indiscriminate gaze of their downward glances, they filed in and proceeded with the automatic ritual of finding a place to sit or stand.  At that moment, like an avatar from another world, a confused and flustered pigeon flew in through the doors and, finding itself in an unknown and unexpected place, stood facing the inside of the train in an obvious state of shock.  It was standing on the edge of the step, with its back to that very world of sunlit skies and crisp air it had just come from, but it couldn’t seem to understand how to get out of its present predicament.  It just stood there motionless and visibly perturbed; its vibrant, animal nature in stark contrast to the drab human atmosphere it presently encountered.  Suddenly, as it was evident the doors of the train would not remain open for much longer, the people in the train, (who just a few seconds earlier had been completely estranged from one another), began to share an obvious concern.  A few furtive glances were exchanged, as the inward, cyclical reveries their minds had been indulging in quite happily until then, collapsed into the immediacy of the present moment.  There was both an obvious and felt sense of compassion for the bird, as well as a practical concern for the situation itself.  An older woman then spontaneously stepped forward and, gently cupping the pigeon in the palm of her hands, pushed it back softly until it’s instinctual reflexes took over and it flapped it’s wings rapidly -- so that, just as instantaneously as it had arrived, it turned and disappeared back into the blue, fresh morning air. 

For the remainder of that train ride it seemed the spell had mysteriously been broken.  A natural lightness and warmth had taken over the whole atmosphere; and people who had previously been separated by an invisible yet impenetrable distance, now seemed to sharing the experience of the train ride together, making eye contact with one another and offering smiles of silent acknowledgement.  It was in that moment that I realized that any lasting and positive change in this world would not come about at the hands of another violent revolution, but only through the small and imperceptible acts of awareness and kindness of everyday people -- acts which would arise out of the same growing sentiment which they would ultimately and gradually reinforce:  a sense of our unavoidable, and global, interconnectedness.