She sat on the train to work listening to a terrible throw-back to the early 80s and, terrible though the Nolan Sisters were, she sat in a quite perky way, bopping her head and tapping her feet happily in time to the music, trying all the time not to notice just how much she was annoying the person next to her, when she realised that she seemed to be the only vaguely happy person on the train – she just did not understand it, I mean, sure, she was not always happy herself and, yes, it was an early ‘off to work we go’ sort of train and, yes, this didn’t exactly thrill her to her toes, but surely amongst this multitude of people there was one other person in existence that felt just a glimmer of happiness or good cheer, I mean, just look at them, with their mobile phones, their books, their Gameboys, their iPods, their well-fed and well-clothed bodies, their ‘better lives’, surely just this material wealth alone would lend them to sniggering or sneering in some sort of a “I’ve got more than you” way - exactly why was it that they seemed to be so utterly, entirely, exclusively, without exception, wretchedly miserable, was the end of the world nigh and she’d missed it in the news or was it more personal than that and maybe she was dying and everyone on the train knew that and no-one was willing to tell her, but that couldn’t be true, I mean how would they even know, it’s not like she had it tattooed on her forehead, or maybe that was it, maybe it was something physical, maybe there was something wrong with her, maybe that saying about bliss (how did that go, was it something like blissfully unaware or, no, that’s it “ignorance is bliss”), that was it, the only possible way that she could be sitting here as happy as a bear with his head stuck in a pot of honey, would be because she didn’t know what it was that was causing all this misery in everyone else, there was some ‘big thing’ that she was totally unaware of and that’s why, every morning, day after day, week after week, people sat around her looking almost suicidal; because they knew the ‘big thing’ and she didn’t, I mean, let’s face it they were probably all secretly laughing at her for being so naive and so unbelievably, pathetically cheerful, god they probably hated her, all of them, everyone on the train, sitting there, looking at her and thinking to themselves “hah, of course she’s happy, she doesn’t know, it’s easy to be happy when you don’t even know”; but the thing is, how would she find out and, more importantly, did she want to find out, I mean, if ignorance is bliss, why break it, why try fix something that doesn’t need breaking- no wonder they all hated her, god, she was miserable.
TAGS: 500, commuting, loneliness, miserable, consumerism