Individual lives = individual worlds

It's kind of funny that the word "individual" literally means "one who cannot be divided".
Which is probably why we like to use the word "human" more. Or "person".
Anyway.
A few years ago, I took to people watching.
Everyone always asks, "How is people watching different from just walking by people everyday and sort of staring at them to creep them out?"
The difference is that you acknowledge that each person you pass by is an individual with their own story, their own life, their own world, really.
My favorite people-watching story just happened last Friday.
I was walking to a nearby elementary school like I do every Friday to just kind of hang out with the kids as charity work when I saw this dude angrily throwing backpacks and stuff out of his car and onto the sidewalk. The car wasn't moving, it was parked, but he was definitely pissed.
Most people would walk by this guy thinking something along the lines of these:
"Okay, really? He needs to not get mad on the street."
"Dude, seriously. I almost stepped on your backpack. Watch it."
"It's finally sunny out! Why so pissy?"
"Someone's constipated...!"
But I envisioned myself in his shoes.
I noticed the woman walking out of the house behind him and into her way-fancier-than-his car give him a dirty look.
And I thought, man, this guy for sure just got dumped. He probably wasn't all that well-off, and now the girl's gotten tired of him and realizes what a good-for-nothing he is (or so she thinks) and wants him out. So he's now pissily unloading his things/loading them in and just not able to do it right because he has to go build his life all over again.
And then I come back into my own reality.
And I think, dang, I am just SO lucky to be listening happily to Ernie Halter on my iPod and able to walk the streets in a relaxed manner.
And I just get so creeped out by the fact that my life doesn't matter at all in his; that he doesn't even know I passed by randomly on the street that day and totally contemplated what his life's all about. Because his life is going on. And it does not include me at all.
Not that I didn't discover this after the first person I watched.
It's just that each feeling is its own; like wow, I just discovered a new world.
This guy just happened to be the most obvious how-can-you-not case, and yet I seemed to be the only one noticing. But the best part is that I don't even know that. There could have been some other girl or guy looking on from one of the windows in the numerous apartment buildings that were lined up all down the street or one of the houses. I don't know that. Because my life is completely detached from theirs.
I think everyone should people-watch; I think everyone should get that rude awakening of how the world really doesn't revolve around them, how it's all in perspective.
I mean, Copernicus realized that just because we're the ones who live on Earth doesn't mean that we're the main event or center of it all in the solar system.
It's about time that each person realizes that just because they live their life and see life through their eyes doesn't mean that they're the main event or center of it all in the grand scheme of life.