Alain de Boton, The Art of Travel

“I got on a bus and, rather than slipping at once into private concerns, tried to connect imaginatively with other passengers. I could hear a conversation in the row ahead of me. Someone in an office somewhere, a person quite high up in the hierarchy apparently, didn’t understand. They complained of how inefficient others were, but never reflected on what they might have been doing to increase that inefficiency. I thought of the multiplicity of lives going on at the same time at different levels in a city. I thought of the similarities of complaints – always selfishness, always blindness – and the old psychological truth that what we complain of in others, others will complain of in us.

(…)

It seemed an advantage to be travelling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by whom we are with, we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others. They may have a particular vision of who we are and hence subtly prevent certain sides of us from emerging. (…) Being closely observed by a companion can inhibit us from observing others, we become taken up with adjusting ourselves to the companion’s questions and remarks, we have to make ourselves seem more normal than is good for our curiosity. But I had no such concerns, alone in Hammersmith in mid-afternoon. I had the freedom to act a little weirdly.”

Now, me:

I do that on a bus – slip into private concerns or into literature. But I also watch people, a lot, and give them the life I want!

I overhear conversations and I pay attention to them. I put myself in peoples’ shoes and I try to imagine what I’d do in such situation… And I always think of the multiplicity of lives going on around me…

I like to travel alone. I feel free, uninhibited. Me, in all weirdness. I let all the sides of me run wild, loose… Mostly because I feel awkward being closely observed… Plus, I pay attention to my own questions, rather than trying to adjust to the other… I am a strangely curious person – strangely because my curiosity drives me to odd places, not all the time too normal… Most of all, I like the freedom to act a little weirdly!