Putting perspective into perspective

Today I caught a train from London to Ledbury. As per usual my boyfriend and I had booked a ‘quiet zone’ carriage.

In a way it’s ironic because we are both usually plugged into music or a podcast so the surrounding sounds aren’t much of a bother. However, if either of us aren’t listening to anything, the silence is quite nice.

As well as booking this type of carriage, we usually try to book seats facing the direction we are travelling. I’m no good at reading in a vehicle at the best of times, but sit me the wrong way and I’m dizzy within minutes.

Unfortunately today we’d blown out with our seat selection and ended up leaving London facing the way we’d come.

I must’ve been having a particularly motion sick day, because even listening to music was making me a bit ill.

At this point, grateful for being in the quiet zone, I took my headphones off to focus on the countryside for a bit.

After a few minutes I realised a woman was talking further up the carriage. I couldn’t hear the detail but she was going on and on and on.

‘Come on, lady’ I thought, ‘this is the quiet zone! It’s not law but seriously, would ya hush up?’

I remind you, I didn’t say this out loud (thankfully) it was my internal monologue.

Five or so minutes went by and this woman was still prattling on.

In that way where you can become disproportionately distracted by something, it was driving me mad.

So, under the guise of going to the bathroom, I got up to suss this bird out.

I’m not really sure what I thought I was going to do. Shush her? Stare her down? Obviously neither of those things, I’m not a total nutter, but I still had this urge to scope out who was making all the noise.

There’s no polite way of putting it. As soon as I stood up I felt like a total dick.

An elderly woman, I’m going to guess late 70s was linked arms with her blind husband reading a book to him.

With the exception of E.T, the first scene of Seven Pounds, and a handful non-movie moments in my life, there aren’t many times where I’ve felt as moved as I did seeing that.

Because I’d technically gotten up to go to the bathroom I decided to see my act through.

When I got closer I heard the woman using a variety of voices for different characters. I chanced upon a dialogue between three people, each with a slightly different accent and manner.

I remembered doing this for the boys I used to babysit nearly 15 years ago. For what it’s worth, I had a wicked Professor Snape. It’s funny the things you forget over the years.

As I sat back down I thought about how stupid it had seemed to worry about the noise on the train. Yeah, we had picked a silent carriage. But in the scheme of things, was that really all that important?

Silence is good for reflection, it gives you clarity of thought and the ability to process things better.

When we have busy lives it’s nice to step away from it all. Often we seek perspective to remember what’s important, and silence works well for that.

But seeing that woman reading to her husband kind of blew silence out of the picture. And in terms of perspective? I’d hazard a guess there are few things that can give a much better reminder for what’s important in life than that.