My aim of this small research project was to share how people feel about their daily commute; the challenges they face, the work they do and the feelings towards active travel. The conversations ended up a bit deeper than that. I ended up finding out truly touching stories, that I have had permission to share on my blog. Before I share these stories, I wanted to talk about some of the interesting things I seen when I started to become aware of people’s behaviors on the train.
I see true beauty in sharing stories and connecting with others. It allows us to recognise how similar we all are. Although we all have our individual journey, our own worries, experiences and concerns; there is a thread that runs right through us all- we all want to have joy, happiness, purpose, connection and love in our lives.
Hippy and romantic but I love it…
I will never forget the stories my gran told me growing up; some of my best memories include sitting by my grans side listening to her voice. Every year my gran would take trips by train; visiting her friends in Guernsey and my uncle in Manchester. I remember enjoying hearing more about her train stories than anything else. She always had so many things to tell me about the people she met along the way. The kindness in humanity; people helping her with her bags, sharing her picnic (she would also bring a flask of tea and sandwiches anywhere we went, including pouring us a cup of tea on the top of the Ferris wheel. She was not phased, she just kept pouring tea as we rocked back and forth, in front of the Scott monument – she was truly incredible. She would tell me about the different lives people had, the different work they did, the places they had been or were going to. The human connection seemed to make her journey so much brighter.
The reason I mention this story is because in our technological world, so many people are lacking face to face connection. The rate of loneliness and mental health problems are higher than ever before…
I started my job as a campus cycling officer last October. Since then I have met so many incredibly interesting people on my commute.
I was thinking how I could share some of the lovely stories and decided I would turn them in to a blog post- stringing together the similarities and beautiful life stories. I also wanted to link it back to active travel- finding out perceptions and barriers.
Two weeks ago, I decided to start observing people’s behaviors on the train- (in the least creepy way) to find out what the majority of people do on their daily commute. Wow, you can learn a lot about how we now live our lives by just watching people..
In the morning the majority of people are on their phones, around 50% of people have earphones in their ears, around 25% of people read a book or the newspaper, about 3% are putting on their make-up and the rest of people 3% are snoozing or looking out the window.
My own “normal/usual” behaviors on the train; check emails/Instagram, reply to messages, look out the window, meditate for 10 mins (highly recommend trying) and then I read a wee book until my stop.
Body language; most people are slouched, without being overly dramatic people look sad and disconnected. I am not saying we need to completely change what we are doing; some of us need the time to space out and relax on the train…. but I can’t help but wonder what would happen if we looked up, if we started talking to people around us? Making connections with the strangers and sharing our stories?
In the next blog, I want to share with you a few individual stories that truly touched my heart.
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