Every morning when I go to work I walk through the central railway station in Helsinki. Every afternoon when I leave work I walk through the same crowded place again. During rush hours it is one of the places I´d least like to go to. This is because the energies in crowds easily feel suffocating and heavy for me. Instead of getting anxious I decided to use those moments to explore myself and my interaction with the world itself (sounds magnificent, doesn´t it?) and see if I could learn something.
So I started to focus on myself when walking through the halls of the station. How do I feel walking there? How do I react to different situation and different people? When I almost bump into someone? What about smells? I have a very sensitive nose which easily means that around crowds I start feeling queasy.
It´s a process that can teach you a lot. When you become aware of how you react to thing and the attitude you have entering those quick moments of interaction, you can start testing and playing with it. I knew to expect somewhat different outcome in those situations by changing my own attitude, but I did not realize how differently it would change my own perception of what I think I see happening.
My favourite way to approach now those crowds I used to be so afraid of, is to forget myself. Instead of being aware of myself and my presence there, I like to just forget it and experience the surroundings. By forgetting myself I sort of become invisible, almost like I am not there. And by doing that I also notice that the amount of "accidents", in which tend I bump into someone, decreased. It is almost like if I don´t need to make statements to the world about myself, the world is not provoked against me. Well, how could you be annoyed by something that isn´t giving you anything to react to.
This is pretty far reaching in a way, but the experience is somehow very symbolic. If you give up the need to push anything, things tend to flow effortlessly and naturally.
This is work in progress and I believe there is still a lot to learn. But at least my phobia of people is giving up and I´m actually having some fun. That cannot be bad, right?
