It was a standard Washington day, grey in the barely daylight hours, wet from last night’s rain. I was on my way to school on a nearly silent school bus. It was an unremarkable day that somehow changed my perspective on life. 

Normally, I would ride the bus with a friend, but she was absent that morning. With nothing better to do, I resorted to staring out the window at the bleak morning and letting my mind wander. Eventually, the bus pulled up at a stop light, waiting with a line of cars driven by bleary commuters all waiting for the light to turn green. 

In the vehicle closest to my window, a woman sat behind her wheel, staring blankly forward at the traffic. She seemed so similar to everyone else I had seen on the drive to school, yet for some reason, this particular woman stood out to me. In my boredom, I began to think about this woman’s day. 

She probably had a similar routine to me, she probably drove the same familiar route every day, shared a similar disdain for damp Washington mornings in early winter. We were sitting in two completely different vehicles, running through our same daily patterns and somehow this morning, we had ended up at the same stoplight. 

It occurred to me that this was the type of interaction I had with the majority of people in the world. Unremarkable, brief and quickly overlooked. We pass by hundreds of people every day and hardly glancing in their direction. 

The realization led me to think about the connections in my life that went beyond a single chance encounter. The friends and mentors and familiar faces that I relied so heavily upon, that I so often took for granted.  

They were the people that made every day special. A ride on the bus without a friend was the beginning to a disappointing day. A decision made without the consultation of someone I trusted became much less meaningful. Connection was the thing that kept my life from being a series of bland repetitions.  

That morning on the bus, I realized the importance of people who see you fully in the mundanity of life. If not for those people, I would just be another face in the misty morning. I made a conscious decision to stop overlooking the people I cared about, to stop letting so many people pass me by in the constant stream of life.  

I will probably never see that woman again, but she was what made that morning memorable. 

Ever since then, whenever I have a lonely moment, when I’m walking home alone or sitting by myself in the library, I think of the woman that I saw on the bus that day. She was no longer just a stranger on her morning commute, to me, she was a reminder to be thankful and outgoing, to remember that every random passer-by has a story and a life of their own.