Floating Words

D.C. Metro

For so long I’ve wanted to start writing – so I finally decided to make a substack and actually put this goal into action. This choice is largely dedicated to my sister and her amazing writing style that I admire so much. I’ve always found that ideas are hard to put into words but, in my mind, my ideas are poetry. I’d say this is due to my love for music lyrics and the emotions they induce. Song lyrics are my favorite form of poetry and music is my favorite form of emotion. 

I listen to music as I take the metro each morning. In my opinion, a metro car during the peak commute hours is an intriguing environment. I’m thinking so many thoughts as I’m sitting there in silence,  making small glances at people, trying to infer where their day might be taking them. No one talks and that’s okay — because everyone thinks their own thoughts. Thoughts that could hypothetically be turned into written words. This is part of my inspiration for naming my substack “Floating Words.” “Floating Words” fits in this sense because our ideas and thoughts are just words that haven’t been written down yet. I imagine, in the silent metro car, that everyone’s thoughts are floating words — Do you realize how powerful that is? Starting my substack will be like floating words because it might not always make sense, but the first step is putting my ideas into written words. 

Someone said to me today, “Everyone is so much more human than you realize.” 
(To preface, this was in a conversation about impostor syndrome – but that’s not the point here.)
That’s crazy, I thought, obviously I think of everyone as human.
But that wasn’t the statement was it? 
I’m right in that I do think of everyone as people, but do I realize the extent of just how human everyone really is?  
Well that I’m not sure.  

This made me think about my own thoughts and how I don’t feel like anyone fully knows me. Everyone knows the parts of me that I want them to know. My family knows parts of me that my friends don’t know and my friends know parts of me that my family doesn’t know. We each get to choose which parts of us people get to know – but we only ever fully know ourselves. No one knows me the same way that my freshman year roommate, Daniela, knows me and no one knows me the same way that my first love knew the person that I was from ages 16-20 – And I think this is the gist of what makes every person so human, and so special.

To the lady sitting next to me on the metro today, 
I don’t need to know the parts of you that your best friend knows, or the parts of you that your daughter knows. We know each other simply as people who shared this 15 minute, humid, silent metro ride together – and that’ll be all for us, but I’m glad we crossed paths and thank you for filling this car with your thoughts and ideas, or floating words.