Probably not.

“There’s something almost obsessive about how, as we get older, we begin to take on unnecessary responsibilities that quietly interfere with our lives. Irrational little fears that creep in without warning. Like panicking on the way to work that we’ve left the hair straighteners on. Or the iron. Or forgotten to feed the cat.

The unsettling part isn’t that we’re suffering from early-onset amnesia or developing a severe form of OCD. The disheartening part is that there’s no one else to check these things for us. Not even someone who might refuse the favour because they’d be just as trapped as us, serving the same capitalist machine, trying to survive in the same absurdly expensive city you both happen to live in.

Again, not that they’re busy but because they simply don’t exist.

So I found myself heading home, too ashamed to admit to my colleagues the real reason I was leaving the office. I muttered something about needing to go to the post office and slipped out quietly. Sitting on the tube, mildly embarrassed and spiralling into that familiar reflection, my eyes landed on a woman across from me, reading the same book I’d been carrying around that morning.

I started wondering: did we have anything in common? Was there something in her that mirrored me or was I just curious to see whether someone completely unlike me could find meaning in the same story? Perhaps I was trying to understand how many different types of people this book could speak to. Did we need to share something like a background, personality, routine to be drawn to the same thing?

Probably not. Especially in a world where millions of people spend their evenings scrolling through the same streaming platforms, watching the same shows served up by the same algorithm. Not because they all think the same but because, like the rest of us, they’re just too tired to choose otherwise.”