Monday – 25 July 2016

Does a city ever sleep?

I watched as vehicles drove off down the intersection and disappeared beyond my sight in a matter of seconds. More cars approached but needed to slow down and eventually come to a stop as the traffic lights changed from green to amber, then red. The vehicles waited and watched as people walked past in front of them from either sides of the road, crossing each other’s paths either slowly or in haste to get to the other side. And beyond this ephemeral wall of people are another set of vehicles moving in parallel directions as its human counterparts.

The walking sign switched from green to red, flashing rapidly to signal urgency for people to stop walking and hint at the fact that the vehicles that had been waiting will soon begin to move. The people reached their desired destinations on the crossing and cleared the view for the drivers in waiting. The traffic lights changed from red to green and the vehicles on either side of the road began to speed off. Likewise, there were also people that paralleled these movements, while the previously moving sections of the intersection were now at a standstill, gathering more vehicles and people waiting for their turn to move.

And every couple of minutes, this process kept happening like it’s never going to slow down, like it’s never going to stop.

So does a city, a city anywhere in the world, ever stop?

To imagine that this process will continue until the sun goes down and rises once more at the dawn of a new day makes it seem as though this isn’t all that significant, that walking through this crossing and driving through this street is just a mundane activity that will help us, or rather them to get to their destination. But the truth is, more people will walk through that crossing and more cars will drive by this street. Sometimes we get so caught up in our own lives, we get so busy, and time just flies by that we feel like everything is happening so fast.

Even though we can’t literally stop time, we can at least slow down our time. You just gotta take it easy sometimes.