Animals Are Sneezing

I walked past a house the other day and the front door was open. This is something I’ve always loved, other people’s front doors being open. It feels like a gift to the passer-by. A generous gesture, inviting the sun and the air in, but revealing a glimpse of the story happening inside, too. Sunlight bouncing off swept floorboards. The cleaner-at-arms tapping the dustpan with the broom over the outside rubbish bin. Inside, a dog tinketty tinketting its toenails down the hall into another part of the house nobody out here can see.

But this particular moment when I passed, I also heard the sound of an animal sneezing.

Public Service Announcement: somewhere, an animal is sneezing. This might not feel important, but your nonsense is unimportant to them too.

That particular day, I wasn’t having a great day. Wasn’t feeling it. Wasn’t relaxed in any of the far-too-many, far-too-busy, far-too-dramatic segments of my life. I was tired. My eye was twitching. I was heading towards one place and away from another place and I had Matters With Which To Contend.

And then an animal sneezed. I’ve decided it was probably a cat. It was a delicate, squashed sound, rather than a raucous, uncouth one. A sneeze triggered by the dust, perhaps, that was being emptied at that very moment into the bin out the front of the house by someone in pyjama pants and a hoodie, muttering quietly to herself in the morning sun.

And I think the reason I love moments like this is that they yank you sideways, a bit, out of the adorably human, humiliatingly solipsistic belief that you are in fact the main character in the day that’s happening all around you.

Because there is, as we speak, a sea snail, edging so slowly across the sand at a beach not far from you. It has taken, well goodness knows really, a long time, for this critter to nudge its way across the watery sand of low tide. Triggered, occasionally, by a sound further down the beach, woop, sschlupp, back inside it goes, dark and safe and quiet and protected. This will continue to happen regardless of what happens in your stressful meeting.

There is, somewhere not far from you, someone finally standing up for themselves. This is the moment they knew was coming and they’re doing it. They’re drawing a line in the sand. It’s all in their throat, the emotional heft of it, and they can’t look anybody in the eye, not for long enough to feel anything other than shaky and confused, but they’ve got this. This is the bit they practiced at home with someone they love, and now here they are, getting past the terrible first bit, waiting for the response they cannot anticipate. They can’t know what will happen next, and the bravery of it stretches them taller. None of this will change because of your exam or your deadline or how much money something’s about to cost.

Someone, also, has lost someone. Moving through the world without their person. Noticing their fingers flick the kettle on. Noticing that they still seem to be their fingers, and yet how can they be. Wondering how other people can do small talk and argue about parking tickets or think about a passing cat sneeze when the universe feels like someone shook a snowglobe, hurling people and park benches and trees flying through the air, sifting a thick, slicing snowstorm through everything.

There’s delight, too. A kid in year eight leans over the new kid’s workstation and teaches them how the bunsen burner works. A friendship, just like that, blooming into years of in-jokes and birthday drinks and road trips and a group chat called ‘The Bunsens’.

Someone’s on holiday, too, today. It’s your world they’re discovering. It’s your everyday that’s unfamiliar. They’re in a shop, picking something up and feeling it between their fingers. They’re in a library, noticing how the light slices through the dust. They’re walking through your favourite streets or up your favourite hill or sitting in your cafe, wondering what to order.

Public Service Announcement: it’s okay to feel like the main character, and sometimes the book you’re in is about a miserable sod or a busy fool or a frustrated shambles. But don’t forget the animals sneezing or the snail’s determined haul. Because maybe it’s less of a narrative with a main character and more of a slight crescendo in a larger symphony.