a hidden universe revealed - early day commuters

It strikes me just to look at them. All these people...Where do they go? All these people...What are they doing at the edge of the night? Because it is still night at 6.00 am in the "morning", the time I get on the subway on my way to the Athens general military hospital, on my way to my last 9 and a half weeks of compulsory military service.

I have to stress "compulsory". Because there is no other way someone would get me out of my bed and onto the streets at 6.00 am on a weekday. These hours were unknown to me before joining the army. Or perhaps they existed once in an obscure and distant past but only as "coming back home time". These are brutal, savage hours, during which the body is too stiff to work properly and the mind not meant to be working at all. These are useless, worthless hours, whose only eventuality is keeping people frustrated, tired and under-productive so that they can be perpetually blamed upon at the office at daylight and fall eternal victims to TV rubbish at twilight. These are hated hours because they only serve to keep people unhappy.

I am unhappy. Riding the subway at 6.00 am on the way to work must be the definition of unhappiness. Or something very close to it. But all these people? All these people, who are not obliged to show their devotion to their country by waking up at 05.30... whom are they obliged to? What have they devoted their lives to? What have they sacrificed their mornings to? Don't they care to see their children wake up, the sun rise, have breakfast with their beloved? Which kind of work is so important? Which kind of work requires them to be the drowsy card-punchers I pity every morning instead of the active workers they could have been. If they only woke up two hours later. If they had only spent the evening out at the cinema instead of falling asleep in front of the TV.

They are unhappy. Worse than that, some don't even know they are. I am unhappy. Mostly for them. Because after these 9 and a half weeks are past, I am going back to being myself. My happy, active, smiling self, having had coffee at 8.00, reading my newspaper on the subway at 09.00, listening to my happy music, ready for another glorious day at work.