MEETING IN THE ELEVATOR TO THE WIEN-MITTE SUBWAY STATION

Today I got on the elevator to the U3 in Wien-Mitte. I was in a cheerful mood, having just visited my daughter, chatted, hugged her...

The situation was nothing special - the elevator was very narrow and people were "in each other's way".

I first thanked a gentleman who stepped aside for me with the sentence "Thank you very much for making room for me". He looked away - almost embarrassed.

Each of us looked in a different direction - past each other, as if in a sauna, so as not to seem to see the nudity, no movement - as if dead.

And then it happened - I looked at all the other people - from different nations, male, female, tall and short, lush and slim, light and dark, dressed in different ways - just openly. I suddenly found the situation of being so closely packed with them in a tiny room and yet - perhaps precisely because of this - so distant, funny, almost comical, and said out loud: "Hello everyone!".

The reactions varied. Some greeted back, some ignored the "strange" behavior, others continued to look into the air and fiddled with their cell phones.

And yet - there was somehow an exhalation, an exhalation in the room, it was somehow different - more relaxed, more open, light.

And then some of us laughed at the same time, talking to each other:

"It's really strange that we don't greet each other!" or "We should do that more often!"

Friendly, turned, relaxed faces, bodies that have moved towards each other!

And in describing I realize that I use words like "us, each other (maybe I should write that separately), each other" - I describe a WE. And words like "friendly, attentive...", feelings, perceptions simply appear.

A gentleman followed me onto the platform after I got off and said:
"You're the first person who's spoken to me in any way today."

I am happy now - again this evening. And recognize even more clearly:
"We shape loneliness, separateness, strangeness - or small moments of connectedness - tiny and big, distant and beautiful moments - now".

We shape the world - as "I" or in the awareness of "WE".