Separate

 If I am in a place among people, and find myself judging, assessing, finding fault with those around me, it is because I am alienated from myself.  If I stop looking out and look within, how I am feeling for instance, I may find an inner discomfort, a sense that while I am in this space, this room, train, event, my insides, my truer self is really elsewhere.  So when I feel separate from others, I stop examining them, and rest in myself asking the question, “And why are you here, Terry, doing what you are doing or going where you are going?”  Maybe I am embarrassed by the answer, but then I feel a connection with others in the room.  The kinship of shared inner disconnect is somehow comforting.  And maybe someone is looking at me in judgment.  But on a New York City subway everyone is looking at their cell phone.