~On the Train~

The light striking the train window slid across the man’s face like a thin line. He leaned back, adjusted the bag on his knees, and looked around.

The carriage was crowded, yet quiet—filled not with voices, but with screen glow. The young person across from him kept his head bowed, two fingers scrolling. Beside him, a man in a suit held his phone as if hiding it in his palm, as though he were checking not a screen but his own pulse. Further down, a mother smiled without lifting her eyes from her phone even while her child sat next to her; the smile seemed directed not at a person, but at a notification.

The man caught himself thinking: “Why am I not like this?” “Is this a deficiency—or something chosen on purpose?”

His phone was in his pocket. He could feel its presence through the fabric—there, ready, like a door waiting to be opened. If he took it out and looked, he would slip into that silent crowd and join the same rhythm. But he didn’t reach for it. It felt as if, the moment he did, he would lose something. He could not even name what: calm, resistance, or the fragile balance of his own inner voice.

Outside, fields flowed backward; inside, everyone looked in the same direction: down. For a moment, he read it as “conformity.” Then the word emptied itself. This was not conformity; it was a shared state of forgetting. Everyone was catching up to something, but no one could say what it was.

“Why am I not like this?” returned, sharper this time.

Maybe, he thought, this was not moral superiority. Not “I am better.” He didn’t even want to entertain that sentence. Because he knew: he, too, had once been swallowed by screens—conditioned by notification sounds, filling emptiness with the motion of his thumb. So the question struck from another place: “What happened that separated me from this?”

The train slowed at a station. Doors opened; a brief gust of wind entered. Some got off, others got on. In that small commotion, something happened: screens rose, eyes lifted. He saw the face of the young person across from him fully for the first time. The young man’s eyes were up, yet not fixed on anything; his gaze seemed to search for a place, to probe the air for a patch of emptiness where he could find himself.

An answer he did not expect passed through him:

“Because I learned to endure emptiness.”

He didn’t like the sentence. It sounded too bold. He objected to himself immediately: “Did I learn it—or did luck simply favor me? Maybe I am the same, only right now I have nothing to run to. Maybe I am acting as if I have nothing to run to.”

For an instant, he saw the carriage like a theater stage. Everyone played the same role in the same play: heads down, fingers fast, faces steady. The play was called “Connection,” yet no one on stage touched anyone else.

He realized that believing himself outside the play could be a role, too. “Why am I not like this?” shifted into: “Am I truly not like this—or am I simply wearing a different mask?”

Still, he didn’t take out his phone. He wanted it to feel not like a virtue, but like a choice. And choices had a cost: sometimes boredom, sometimes waiting, sometimes having to tolerate oneself.

“People,” he thought, “are afraid of waiting. Emptiness catches them.” “A phone does not fill that emptiness; it only makes it unspoken.”

He made a small agreement with himself: “I won’t take it out for one stop.” Then he expanded the agreement: “What if I don’t take it out for an entire day?” That second sentence frightened him, because the answer was ready: “A lot will happen.” Warnings, curiosity, fear of missing out. And most of all, having to be alone with himself somewhere inside that day.

The train slowed again at the next stop. Doors opened. This time, an elderly man at the end of the carriage struggled as he stood; the shopping bags in his hands slipped. No one noticed right away—because everyone was looking, but no one was seeing.

The man stood, crossed the distance in two steps, gathered the bags, and lightly supported the elderly man’s arm. The old man thanked him; his voice was quiet, but real. The man felt that whispered “thank you” weigh more than any notification.

As he returned to his seat, one or two people lifted their heads. Brief, shy glances. Then back to their screens.

He sat down. The train accelerated again. The carriage returned to its quiet. But inside him, there was a small clarity now.

The answer to “Why am I not like this?” was not a single thing—neither a character summary nor a sentence of pride.

It was closer to this:

“Because sometimes, I choose to return to the world.”

The phone was still in his pocket. If he wanted, he could take it out. If he wanted, he could merge into the crowd. But he looked out the window; fields streamed by, poles passed, the sky remained gray yet wide.

And for a while, he let that wideness be enough.