If every passing stranger could show you one important minute, how slowly would you walk home?

If every person you passed could show you one minute that mattered to them, the street would become impossible to hurry through. The city would turn into a dense archive of loss and relief and small triumphs, all of which is already there, invisible, at every moment. The information is real; only the access is missing.

You can act on a fraction of it without the access. Walk a little slower, look at people, let the assumption of depth change your tone. It will not tell you anyone’s minute, and it will change how you treat the fifty people you would otherwise pass without registering them at all.