Go for a walk in a slower part of a city while you listen to this.
Look around. What do you see? Just think it. Don’t say it out loud.
Ask someone near you what time they were born.
Hand a stranger a quarter. “Hey, is this yours? No? You sure? Because I found it… behind your ear!” Then play the game in which you find the quarter behind their ear.
It’s all a game. Treat it like one.
You’d like to initiate conversations with strangers, so go do that. Make sure you smile to avoid the always-on-alert pepper spray-carriers.
Approach a distinguished tree. Stare closely at its trunk. Keep staring. Oh, that part’s cool. It’s weird how we forget to look sometimes. Take out your headphones. I will make a very loud noise in two minutes to remind you to put them back in.
(2 minute pause)
(LOUD NOISE)
That wasn’t so bad, was it? As long as your headphones were still outside your ears.
Leave notes for strangers. Maybe they’ll leave notes for you.
Don’t go straight home after work. Turn off your phone. Take a bus you’ve never taken. Get off after 9 stops and walk into the nearest store. Buy the cheapest thing in there. On your way out, turn back to the clerk and declare matter-of-factly, “I’m not driving around with a hot tub in the back of my truck like it’s 1983.”
For every guy you see in a suit who wants to be in a suit, there’s a guy in one who doesn’t want to be. And a guy not in one who wants to be. They’re all okay.
Is that another Subway? There are more Subways than McDonald’s now. Don’t eat at either, but tell someone that fact at the next dinner party you’re coaxed into.
Do a spin. Just one. Pretend like you didn’t. Or act like you did.
Put on a shirt you’re ready to throw away. Write Free Book on it. Tape a book to its front, one you like that you’ve already read. Walk around until sometime asks you for it.
Buy a coffee or a tea. Pause this until you get it.
Go up to person sitting alone on their laptop and ask them, “Will the eagle’s talon ever point upwards?” Pretend you’re expecting to hear a specific response, as if you’re meeting a fellow spy and you need to make sure this is the right person.
Oh yeah, don’t forget – this is water.
Then again, who am I to call this that?
Don’t skip any of this, even the – especially the boring parts and the silence.
Start singing a well-known song and see if anybody joins in.
Look at all their tired faces. They do appear exanimate. You do too. You’re all wrong. You just need a jolt. Unfortunately most of those are viewed as anti-social in the actual sense of the world. They’re not. In the end, we all just want a story.
Go tell someone this joke: “What did one twin fetus say to the other? Move over, I don’t have enough womb.” C’mon, do it. It’s a stranger. Embarrassment is pointless. Be more than an ant. I don’t want to be an aunt. I want to be an uncle.
You know the joke that they’ll use in certain sitcoms where one of the kids finds out his sister is pregnant and so he goes, “Am I going to be an aunt or an uncle?” thinking that he’s asking if the baby will be a boy or a girl? That could make sense if there’s a different confusion going on.
Engage in an activity you’ve never done before, and then don’t tell anyone about it. And don’t even tell someone you did anything at all. Enjoy it for yourself. Some things are just for you. Don’t forget that.
Tell a passerby that they’re amazing. Just do that and walk away. Compliment not for anything in return, but to brighten a day. It feels good. You’ll tell your friends about it later, in one way or another.
Give a fin to the next busker you see. And stop for a minute. Listen to them. Consider their life.
Walk down an alley instead.
It’s quieter but still has more going on.
Laugh as hard as you can, for as long as you can.
Until the end happens.