On a bench in a flowering park filled with faces of young children and their mothers or fathers, I sit and wonder. How many of these faces have I seen before but never remembered? Could I have passed by one of these people at a shopping centre, a beach and maybe even on the street but never once took notice that we have crossed paths more than once? Life is a journey and along the way I would have met hundreds of people, all with a different story to be told. But I can’t help but to think about the other billions of stories I won’t be able to hear. Every person I pass by has a new and different story, which could be as exotic and exciting as the next person. Each story has brought that person to where they are now, but I will never know how many challenges they had and adventures they went on to get there.
And as I sit on this bench, I look at the happy family by the swings. A mother and father pushing their sweet daughter as she screams with laughter. I smile as I think about what their story could be. There are so many possible answers to how they got to this point in their life. I wonder if this child came to them quickly and naturally or if it wasn’t so easy and there were many times the mother thought she could never bear child. And yet, here she stands smiling ear to ear. Five years ago, would she have ever imagined that her life would be like this now?
I close my eyes and breathe in the fresh spring air. Tilting my head back as the sun shines across my face. I open my eyes and look up at the sky. Blue skies with clouds that look too fluffy and perfect to be real. Smiling at the thought that everyone looks up to the same sky that I do, or the same stars at night. Someone may be living a life so extravagant and thrilling or just the opposite and still we all share the same sky.
In a world of seven billion people and I am one of them there is no one the same and each living a life full of inspiring and heartbreaking chapters. Everyone has a different story as complex as my own and I will never know how theirs will end.
Year 9 English @ Bossley Park High 