The People In The Bar

I was out with some of my friends recently. We went to a place called Kitchener's. Out of nowhere, I had a small out of body experience, I stopped bobbing my head and singing along to the music and just looked around. Bars and pubs are always deliberately dimly lit places. Reasons behind that fact most likely differ but we all know that when the lights come on the night is done.

I stood there with my eyes wide open (needed my vision to be steady and true, needed to let as much light in so that I could see as clearly as possible). It was loud, very loud. As these places usually are and everyone was dancing along to the music, talking, singing, or just standing around. They were all doing something and all of us were in that little confined space together and just then the thought hit me, We Are The People In The Bar.

As a child there are just things you are not allowed to do, places you aren't allowed to go. You always imagine what the inside of these places looks like, what the people in those places look like, what they do in those places. Your mind fabricates all sorts of possible realities. You long to experience whatever it is those people are experiencing because you just don't understand why there are places you can't go to.

You eventually grow up and reach an age when you not only can but are allowed to act on your impulses and visit all the places you were once not allowed into as a child. Now, in my later years, I can only imagine the sort of ridiculous and fantastical ideas children must develop around places like clubs, bars, or strip clubs. 

One never notices themselves growing up. It only ever makes sense in retrospect. Looking back at your younger self and using the wisdom and experience you've accumulated over the years and just marveling at the major or minor differences between your present self and your past self. Your present self is always the wisest and smartest you've ever been in your life. Until some time goes by and that version of you becomes the wisest and smartest. 

Every once in a while try to deliberately take in life. Not passively. Don't wait till moments pass before you look back on them in awe. Sometimes just take a step back to acknowledge the loud music and dancing people. Acknowledge what that moment means to you as a person, then proceed to live in those moments.

You never noticed when you stopped being a child because you were too busy being alive. Life gets hectic but make a habit of taking some time to acknowledge moments. They don't even have to be special moments. Just remind yourself what it means to be alive. What it is to be happy or sad or filled with emotion. What it means to be human or just another one of those people in the bar.