Intimacy in Sharing Windows
Many of us have spent everyday for 6+ months working within the confines of our homes or tiny 1-bedroom apartments without much opportunity to see more than our local market and pharmacy. We can be grateful we have a place to call home while still being tired of seeing the same walls everyday (the ones that some of us never decorated.)
My ability to cope and my productivity varies week-by-week. I go from a couple weeks where I can just “get it done” to several weeks of being so bored by my job and so averse to doing my work that the avoidance becomes much worse than doing it.
The fact that we don’t get a change of scenery is one of our more superficial problems at the moment, but it sure has a way of heightening our emotions. I’m convinced that seeing something other than your house is a basic need.
One day though, my manager gave me the gift of a link, and a new window opened.
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All of a sudden I was looking out someone’s literal window in Germany, then Switzerland, then China and Mexico. My eyes widened. I drew in a sharp breath and smiled. Wow. Just wow. I was sitting here — in my tiny apartment in Massachusetts — painfully bored by the mundanity of my life, and all of a sudden I was thrust into someone else’s reality.
Every time I clicked the button, thousands of miles were suddenly removed between someone in the world and me. The earth folded, and I could look right through someone else’s eyes. I felt less alone, and I felt so much closer to this stranger who decided to share their view with the world.
I also realized that all these people, in all these places, are just as bored as I am. They are living the same boring, mundane, beautiful, magical life. It’s true — I am not alone! And I am not missing out! — because there it was right in front of me — their view.
Something I have always found kind of amazing, but sad is how many magical, ordinary corners of the world I would never get to see. For this reason, I always loved google maps and street view. Neither of those technologies, however, provides quite the same intimacy as looking out someone else’s window while still in your own home. The simplest things can be so grand.
