Tere Figueras Negrete

So Tony, the DJ graphic designer, stands up and starts chanting, bus pass, bus pass.

And Danny, the Tolkien-loving sociopath, starts chanting, power to the people, power to the people.

The whole train is clapping and cheering.

And we are no longer strangers on a train.

We are a movement.

And just when I think that Danny and Tony are going to pry open the doors of the train and we're going to rush out onto the tracks like the cast of Les Mis, just like storming the barricades, demanding free bus passes and snacks from Miami-Dade Transit.

Just like that, the train rumbles to life and we begin to move.

And the moment is over.

Everyone scrambles for their bags and their babies and their...

and their cell phones.

But I learned something important that day about myself, about Miami.

I learned that we are all just speeding along on our own parallel tracks, on our own fast lanes, never intersecting, rarely connecting, never thinking about where we are, always thinking about where we should have been already.

But when it all comes to a screeching halt,

We are all ultimately bound by three universal but simple truths.

Water.

Snacks.

Freedom.