Waiting for the next train

Alone
Toronto, ON
February 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

It's been a while since I took a train to the big city, and it'll probably be another long while before I do so again.

Which is my way of saying I kinda miss scenes like this one, furtively stolen moments of normality amid journeys far from home.

I shot this fleeting scene barely two weeks before the first lockdown began. It didn't occur to me at the time how profoundly things - and by extension, our views of them - were about to change.

At the time, I took days like this for granted, assuming I'd be back in a couple of weeks, assuming things would continue to roll along as they always had.

Funny how that works, though, because nothing is promised, and even if the pandemic hadn't painted over the landscape so thoroughly, the view could have just as easily been changed by some other singular factor, or combination of many.

It can be headache-inducing to ponder all the possibilities, all the coulda-woulda-shoulda moments that govern day-to-day life. But the answer is to simply stop pondering at all. There's no controlling what happens next, so we may as well refocus our efforts on enjoying what we have, in the now.

And on this Thursday late-February morning on a bitterly cold TTC subway platform, I took a moment to enjoy what I had before the rest of the day beckoned.

It may look like an ordinary shot of a stranger waiting for his train, another soul going through the paces of his own life. But for me, it was a rather timely reminder to continue recording seemimgly ordinary moments every day, wherever we may happen to be.

Because anything and everything can be extraordinary, but only if we allow ourselves to appreciate it.

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