Today I Took the Train

Today I took the train. 

I love train travel. 

Amtrak, if you’re listening, I’m not an influencer but I could become one for you!

As a kid, my favorite birthday present was a day trip to Chicago from Kewanee, IL. I loved seeing all the small towns pass by and visiting the snack car. If I remember correctly it was just over 2 hours each way. We rode the Amtrak into the city and shopped at the American Girl Doll store and Disney store. I think we may have visited the Shedd Aquarium on one of these trips, too. Or the Museum of Science and Industry–my favorite museum!

As an adult, Matt and I have planned similar day trips for my birthday, going from either Kewanee or Princeton to downtown Chicago and back again. These trips had less shopping and more exploring! We’ve visited the Bean–I mean, can you even go to Chicago and not see the Bean? (Side note: did you know its real name is “Cloud Gate” and “The Bean” is just a nickname?) We’ve marveled at the streets Batman drove around in The Dark Knight movies. We’ve eaten a lot of Garrett’s popcorn. One of my favorite stops on these trips has been to the Art Institute of Chicago. I love seeing the Thorne Miniature Rooms and A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884. Even someone who isn’t familiar with any artists except da Vinci, Picasso, and Van Gogh would enjoy visiting the Institute. 

Now that we live in Florida, we certainly cannot take a day trip to Chicago! We can still get there by train from Jacksonville, but it’s a much longer trip. Instead we can take day trips to other destinations, like Orlando, Savannah, or Charleston. 

The way trains are perceived in our culture is a bit romantic, isn’t it? Think about all the songs that talk about trains! My favorite being “Champagne Problems” in which Taylor Swift sings, 

You booked the night train for a reason
So you could sit there in this hurt
Bustling crowds or silent sleepers
You’re not sure which is worse

And I don’t mind rocking out to Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” when he sings,

I’m going off the rails on a crazy train

Of course we can’t forget the infamous opening to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” which says,

Just a small town girl
Livin’ in a lonely world
She took the midnight train going anywhere

Lots of great songs that mention train travel! 

To be honest, this is part of why I love riding on the train so much. Not just the music, but the romanticism of it all. The train is both fast and slow. It’s both busy and calm. We see the world around us differently on a train. Literally, looking at the backside of shops and factories while driving through small towns, the carefully curated storefronts out of view. Figuratively, realizing everyone around you is on their own journey through life, with their own hopes and dreams and plans and destinations. 

There’s a new word that was coined in 2012 that captures this feeling: sonder. Writer John Koenig creates words that describe feelings that don’t have a word for them yet. He wrote about sonder in his project The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows and it’s been an important concept ever since. Simply put, sonder is “the awareness that everyone has a story.” You may have seen a picture floating around the internet with a longer definition:

Sonder. 

How beautiful is it to think I’m just sipping coffee, or writing this very blog post, in someone else’s background? I’m here, but I’m not part of their story. If a movie was to be made about the woman across the aisle from me traveling to Cary, NC, I would be an extra in that film. Or maybe not, because she probably wouldn’t remember to cast an extra in her thirties with a buzz cut. 

It’s in this realization that I feel more connected to the world around me. This may sound counterintuitive, but sonder reminds me of how vast and complex the world is! What an amazing world we live in! I can behold the wonder of the many people, plans, and lives that exist now or came before me that have enabled me to be sitting here, right now. 

I’m riding on a train that I don’t know how it works or who’s conducting. I’m not sure how long the tracks have been here. I don’t know which stop the ticket-taker lives at.  

I’m writing on a laptop which contains technology I can’t even fathom. Typing words made of squiggles we call letters that someone, one day long ago, decided meant something. I’m posting it on my blog on a website that anyone in the world could stumble upon and read on a device made of plastic, metal, and glass, molded into something they can also speak into and hear out of. 

I’m sitting across from a woman whose name I don’t know, whose story I don’t know, whose journey I don’t know. I will probably never see her again. And her life is vibrant and complex and as mysterious as my own is to her. But she fell asleep pretty quickly once our trip began, so I doubt she’s thinking about sonder. 

Sonder connects me to the world by reminding me of how valuable everything around me is. Just like the feeling of standing at the bottom of a mountain, feeling in awe and so small next to it. Or standing on the seashore, looking at the water go on for miles and miles. It’s a feeling of connectedness and insignificance. This insignificance is awe-inducing, not limiting. It’s not a bad feeling; it’s one of wonder. It reminds me I’m not actually in control of my life, and thank God for that! The world is so much bigger than anything I could even control. 

All of these thoughts and feelings course through my veins when I take the train. 

Today I took the train.

All aboard!