We don't notice each other
I read this alarming and horrifying news report a few months ago about a man who died at work and no one even noticed for days. He literally died at his desk (not a private office, no sir, a cubicle set up), sat there, slumped over, growing colder, and no one even noticed. How can we live life that way? So apathetic to each other?
Yesterday in the middle of the afternoon I started choking at my desk. I must have just inhaled the wrong way or something because I wasn't even eating or drinking anything. But suddenly there I was, coughing and grasping for breath. My office is also an open, cubicle setting. I'm surrounded by people to my left and right and even behind me. And no one noticed. As I was sitting at my desk coughing and grasping for air, everyone else had their headphones on, and went about their business. Obviously, I'm okay. I'm typing this, afterall. But it sent shivers down my spine.
That in a room full of people you could be dying and no one even notices.
That in a room full of people you could actually die and no one notices for days. What kind of a life of desperate and quiet isolation must that man have lived that no one would call to check on him. Not a family member? A friend? That his own co-workers didn't find it strange he sat slumped at his desk without ever moving or uttering a word?
How can we live this way? Without ever even noticing each other?
What's worse is when you do reach out...and are met with silence. Maybe that's why so many never do. Fear of the silence.
Alone. Quiet. It's no way to live. No way at all.
Yesterday in the middle of the afternoon I started choking at my desk. I must have just inhaled the wrong way or something because I wasn't even eating or drinking anything. But suddenly there I was, coughing and grasping for breath. My office is also an open, cubicle setting. I'm surrounded by people to my left and right and even behind me. And no one noticed. As I was sitting at my desk coughing and grasping for air, everyone else had their headphones on, and went about their business. Obviously, I'm okay. I'm typing this, afterall. But it sent shivers down my spine.
That in a room full of people you could be dying and no one even notices.
That in a room full of people you could actually die and no one notices for days. What kind of a life of desperate and quiet isolation must that man have lived that no one would call to check on him. Not a family member? A friend? That his own co-workers didn't find it strange he sat slumped at his desk without ever moving or uttering a word?
How can we live this way? Without ever even noticing each other?
What's worse is when you do reach out...and are met with silence. Maybe that's why so many never do. Fear of the silence.
Alone. Quiet. It's no way to live. No way at all.
Comments
On a side note, im curious to know how one inhales the wrong way?? ;-)