Sugar and Spice, Snails and Dog Tails

What's one's identity?

I mean, can someone really define themselves by the things they wear, the music they listen to or even by their last name or the country they're from?

Personally, I think the answer is "fuck no".

The best way you can get to know a person is not to learn every detail about their life: it's to figure out the many little things they like. Think about it: if you know what can genuinely make someone happy, the rest is just frou-frou.

The other day, I was in the bus and that guy sat in front of me. At first, from the corner of my eye, I thought I knew him from some distant friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend connection since his face seemed familiar. But as I took a closer look, I figured out he was not the person I thought and that he was in fact a complete stranger.

There is nothing more disappointing in life than realizing you don't know someone, and especially this guy.

As the bus was swaying from one side to the other, I caught myself staring at him. What if this guy was, by some extraordinary coincidence, the person I was suppose to meet in a couple of years and that would eventually become the most important person of my life? The purpose of my existence? What if he was THE one? This thought swinged around in my head just like the bus was doing along the street, and it eventually became scandalous to me that I did not know this guy yet...

But being me, I did not start a conversation with him or anything of that kind.

No way.

It was much more fun to imagine who he was. So pushing my staring at the edge of looking like some psycho, I started deciding who that guy was.

He was a student, of course. You could tell by his apparent youth, by the way he looked sanely decadent and underconcerned. But what else? What little things made him incredibly satisfied with his own existence? So I came up with a whole bunch of stuff:

He liked smiling at strangers just to see their reaction. He liked cooking cheese omelettes and staring at cakes as they are rising up in the oven. He liked walking barefeet on the asphalt of his driveway when the sun warmed it up in the summer. He liked writing with a brand new pen and drinking tea with honey and lemon on cold november mornings. He liked singing at the top of his lungs while taking a shower. He liked doodling while talking on the phone. He liked remembering the name of a song he's been looking for for many days. He liked skating on outdoors skating places. He liked getting mail. He liked helping lost tourists. He liked putting on his favourite sweater when it just came out of the drying machine. He liked waking up on time by himself without an alarm clock. He liked ice cream runs at night and watching old pictures.

He also liked making up all sorts of crazy scenarios about people he saw in the bus.

DING!

The guy's took his knapsack and rang the bell to get down to his stop.

No need to notice which one.