A man sitting on a subway car, deep in thought with his hand covering his face, with a subway map in the background

Leaving the glittering theater of the Parisian streets, I descended into the dim, slightly dusty subterranean chambers of the Metro. The Paris underground is a living museum, its veins first opened to the city for the 1900 World’s Fair. Consequently, while certain lines boast sleek, automated carriages of the future, others remain stubbornly antique. On these vintage lines, passengers must still physically wrench open the heavy metal door latches to escape. I settled into a corner of one of these clattering carriages, surrendering to its jarring, uncomfortable rhythm, and let my eyes drift across the cabin.

Directly above the doors ran the narrow strip of the route map for Line 8, which traces a path across Paris, bridging the Left Bank to the Right. In front of the map, a vertical metal stanchion pole stood with a sort of blunt, rude indifference. And right beside it, a man sat frozen. His head was bowed deeply, his face half-shielded from the world by a massive hand.

To any observer, his posture was the universal silhouette of crisis. He looked utterly consumed by some monumental misfortune. Was he desperately rehearsing an apology to his wife for last night’s argument? Or perhaps he had just realized, with sudden, paralyzing despair, that he had forgotten to buy onions for dinner? It is a peculiar truth of the human condition that no matter how far we travel, the anatomy of dread remains remarkably uniform. Rodin’s famous The Thinker was originally conceived to look down from the Gates of Hell, pondering the agonizing fate of the damned below. Yet, looking at the man in front of me, I couldn't help but cynically wonder if the "Gates of Hell" he faced were nothing more than the choice of tonight's menu.

Whether he ultimately stumbled upon a brilliant epiphany or simply drifted off to sleep, I will never know. The train, entirely indifferent to his private drama, rattled relentlessly forward toward the next station, rushing blindly through the dark. In the end, most of our agonizing, heavy-hearted worries are just that—momentary specks of dust, completely invisible to the rest of the world rushing past.