Train journeys and expressions of happiness

Below is an extract from a piece I wrote on my way home from a hike back in 2025.

Being on the train solo is usually eventful for me. I usually never talk on my solo train journeys, but my mind is naturally inclined to be active on them regardless. Sometimes it gets even a bit too active.

I’m on the train home from this hike, and like many of my other train journeys, I look at people and see them. I sometimes worry about whether I look at people too much they think it’s weird, or possibly even creepy. I imagine some people may even think I find them attractive from the stares, but that’s hardly ever the case >:

It’s the expressions on their faces. I see the full thing. Some faces look sad, but not pitiable. Some, pitiable and sad. Some, very happy. And I admire the happiness - I say a little prayer for them in my heart, that they don’t lose their happiness.

I just saw a group of three kids and the mother to one of them, I think, coming from the birthday celebration of one of them. They looked very happy (in every sense of the word), unconcerned, delighted, and every other fine word that can be used to express happiness. Most importantly, they expressed that happiness freely, unbothered by the same constructs that would typically make an adult more restrained in their celebrations under same circumstances.

Here’s the thought that came to my mind when they got off the train - ‘Why do people get less “as free as this” the older they get?’. I’m not sure I have an answer to that question. And at the moment, I’m even more unsure about whether it’s a question worth having an answer to.

End.