Moment on a bridge

On a recent evening, late enough for the night to be illuminated by lights but early enough for traffic to be a continuous flow, I found myself standing on a bridge over Thanon Phloen Chit looking down. I was reminded of one of my favourite quotations, something I found during an endless perusal of Winnie the Pooh: “Sometimes if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.”

In a moment so burdened with craziness in a city that seems never to stop to breathe I was filled with an overwhelming sense of serenity. Things seem smaller when you're on a bridge. Each person is a microcosm attempting existence within this chaos. When magnified and examined up close, each specimen is striving, needing, wanting, longing. But when watched from a bridge, it appears as a mere attempt at existence. Resembling worker bees, each person emanates a contentedness that's only possible when one focuses entirely on the task at hand.

Of course this contentment is lost and overridden when analysed, which is my tendency. I am, if truth be told, insufferably inclined to over-analysis... I blame having spent four years studying The Human Condition, a title that I feel aptly describes the conflicting and often contradicting state of the human psyche and the environment in which it attempts to function. This moment on the bridge, however, silenced my mind (a rare occurrence) and somehow merged the bedlam of my own life with that of everyone buzzing beneath me. I felt lighter, less burdened and in this moment, I found immense relief.