Outside, I hear a stream of passing cars, loud enough that I am not able to sleep during those nights where the hearing is sharp and the imagination vivid, while the sight is dull and heavy from tiredness. It is strange how people can grow into a life of constant tiredness while never doing anything exhausting which could warrant it, as if the delight of rest was only given to those who deserved it from a hard day of work.
Where do those cars come from, and where are they headed? That I do not know. I do not bother to think about them the same way that mechanics do not pay attention to the smell of motor oil, because we get used to those things very easily. But what I know is that no one comes to visit the street that I live in, it is one of those places which people pass by but never visit, sort of like how some people are only talked to because they know certain useful things, or because people need money from them, or because they are acquainted with others more interesting than them, not because anyone specifically wants to interact with them.
The sound of the cars blends with the rest until it becomes unrecognizable. How odd must it be for a specific sound to have no one to recognize it amongst a sea of undistinguishable noise, like a child looking for the safety of their parents amidst a crowd of strangers. If sounds could tell that no one was paying attention to them, would they change in subtle ways so as to grab our attention?
Of course sounds do not have this form of self-awareness, which makes this question silly, but human existence is necessarily noisy, we cannot help but take space and leave auditory traces of our existence to those around us. To live is to be noisy, and to live with others is to acknowledge and at the very least tolerate their noise, such that we often have to make deliberate noise to get someone's attention before we can properly communicate with them.
And at the end of the day, every car that passes by is the trace left behind by a personal journey. This doesn't make our lives heroic, far from it, after all most people are driven by habit, convenience and safety, and little more, but even the daily commutes which we dread and try to go through as quickly as possible are another important mark we leave in the world. And how strange is it that the sounds made from all walks of life, from the exhausted worker wanting to go back home, to the excited young man making his way to the place of the lady who has caught his heart, to the weary daughter who feels obligated to visit her parents and knows that they haven't changed all that much in the past decade, all of those people end up leaving the same traces to the strangers who do not know their life.
How great it would be if we could know a little bit about their life from just a small sound, even from a distance, the same way that some people can read into the depths of someone's character through their physiognomy, or that others can recognize a bird from their chirp. Perhaps then those on the road would treat one another with more dignity. Perhaps we would understand that everyone else is simply trying to go about their day, and not deliberately treat the road as their own personal property, on which they may do as they wish even at the expense of others.
Oh, how dehumanizing cars are. What a shame really. We are forced to live by them, and now are forced to die by them, a slow death of physical and social atrophy, of building cities which are no longer fit for us, but for them. Has any species on Earth experienced such a fate? You do not see the snails of the world forced into taking care of massive shells, which require them to rearrange their entire life so as to accomodate. You do not see spiders build webs so massive that they spend more time taking care of them rather than eat or have offspring. And you do not see ants build tunnels so long that they get lost in them, isolated from their colony and working away from years and years at tasks for no good reason.
No, it seems that only human beings have figured out how to alienate ourselves. What a curse it is really. And not only that, but every alienated person is a reminder for the others of what we as a collective have given up. When we gaze into the lifeless eyes of those who have resigned from the adventure of life, and who now only operate from duty and not passion, doing as they must to pay their debts and meet their obligations, we see the potential that we have given up, the miracle of life betrayed by our cleverness, our desire to control reality, and also because of our fear of the other.
Yes, the fear of the other. Isn't that why cars are such lonely vehicles? Because deep down, people want to be left alone, have the freedom to go everywhere and visit no one. How strange it is that the world has become smaller through our faster means of transport, and yet people have only become more estranged from one another!
I tell you what, there is nothing strange about it. This is exactly what our ugly selves want but would never admit. It is only through heartbreak, or plain old disappointment, that we see the extent of our selfishness, the way that we only care about others to the extent that they make us feel good, the way that both the people who dominate conversations, and those who passively listen, only care about themselves, or the way that we excuse ourselves from social obligations as soon as they inconvenience us in any way.
It's a sad world, it really is. I haven't accepted it yet. This is why I write this, so that I may accept it and move on with my life. I told you that cars frequently pass by and prevent me from sleeping, but when I look outside my window, the cars are empty. There is no passenger, and there is no driver either. In fact, there is no car outside to begin with, but I still hear the sounds, because I wish that there were people nearby who would remind me of their presence, even if only through their noise, and make me feel less lonely than I am.
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Fiction Alienation Modernity Loneliness
2026-02-19