That 2nd Seat on the Train… Give it up, you might just change the world!

Regularly in and out of London there’s a pattern forming over years, where we distance ourselves from our true nature and saturate our mind with isolation…

Every day I see people with any manner of specialisations, in terms of blocking off that 2nd seat on the train.

Now, everyone knows that the train seats are frustratingly narrow, I’m personally 6 foot 3 with pretty broad shoulders, so to sit next to, near enough anyone, on the train, I have to do the sort of, you lean backward, I’ll lean forward approach, but we’ve lost our touch when it comes to working through diversity together.

There’s the rebel traveller, piling the bags in the foot space next to them, as if to ward you off thinking about the seat you’ve missed out on as you stand; there’s the posh traveller, now they have the same mentality as the rebel traveller, but their bags are posh and they’ve likely got a lovely little bit of hand luggage on the seat next to them… wouldn’t want you to encroach on their personal space…

There’s the canary wharf suit, with his legs so wide apart you wonder whether the tailored inside leg is going to burst at the crotch seam…

There’s the heavy reader, casually sprawling their body shape over as much of their seat and the vacant neighbouring seat as they can, while burning a hole in the back of a political biography, as they stare almost through it, emanating their want to be left in situ, alone…

There’s the newsstand lover, where their newspaper flits out to one side as they paw through it, hoping the shadow of redundant pages and faux profile of machine pressed paper might stave your mind away from parking your bottom next to them…

I mean, the list goes on!

The common trend is that there are not enough seats on the trains most of the time and in stead of grin and bear it together, we’re trying to find a sanctum, at the detriment of our fellow human being.

There’s less interaction now than there used to be, we’re all so afraid to step outside our comfort zone and be human with one another, that we leave other in discomfort in our wake… it’s almost a bi-product of our own social anxiety, that the feeling spreads and others begin to operate in the same way.

The trend in mental health is that your interaction dwindles and you reach out less and less for the connectivity we crave as children. But we must shift this gear and bring back what we’ve lost.

So I say no more, to seat blockers!! The newspapers, the laptop monopoly, the legs up, the heavy reading technique, those posh and rebel travellers with luggage galore!!

Give it up… invite those standing to be seated… offer your chairs to the ladies please gents, because there’s not enough of The Kingsman about the male populous in the country any more.

You may just make a connection, you may just hear a story, you may just sit there peacefully until your connection… but you’ll sit there together, the weight of the world is off both of you now not just the one…

If we share our space in life we share our burden and if we share our burden, even if only by being next to one another, we unconsciously support others in their day to day.

So when you next get on the train, make it known that seat next to you is available, it’s there for another, because this simple act, rarely practises it seems, could just be the catalyst to a bigger change, a wider shift in mentality…

Lets not isolate ourselves, we tread the same path…