How Commuting Leads To Insignificance

Looking at people around my Tuesday meeting, I was caused to wonder about significance. What significance did the glances, smiles and meetings of eye have? Back in the day, a smile from a pretty girl was the second most significant thing in the world, exceeded only by a steady, measured, eye-to-eye gaze that could mean only one thing. By contrast I knew that the little contacts in the Room had no significance at all. Why not? Because I was going to get on my train home and they were going to get on theirs. We were not going to share so much as a cup of coffee, let alone a bed and a night. It's the same as interviewing with an potential employer: the moment they say the don't want to take it further, that's it. They forget you, you forget them. They become something less than strangers, because now you know they hold no possibilities for you. Significance is about consequences and consequentials: if nothing follows from it, nothing about it matters. This is why our interactions with culture can be as meaningful than our interactions with people: reading a book can change the way I act, think and feel, as can talking to someone. This doesn't mean those polite, short exchanges with strangers to whom we give directions, or from whom we buy our lunch, aren't pleasant and neither are they meaningless, on the contrary, they mean that we are pleasant, well-mannered members of society. It means that they lead nowhere. They are a contact between us in our roles, not between us as people. It does not matter what they think of me, what they might hope of me, nor me of them. It isn't going to happen. The trains are leaving to take us back to our dormitory suburbs. This is why life at a residential university is more intense: because you are always within walking distance. There is nothing pulling you apart. Separation is not built into the very reason you are there, whereas it is when I sit in a Room in central London. We meet by train and we will be separated by train, on the same day. We have no choice: the train with the flat or house at the other end awaits.