October 27, 2025. Another Monday, another grey sheet drawn across the Parisian sky. The clock on my dashboard, an insistent digital pulse, read a quarter past five this morning when I first turned the ignition. Five-fifteen, the city still mostly asleep, breathing out its cool, damp air. My apartment felt cold, impersonal, much like the feeling that’s been clinging to me for weeks now, perhaps even months. It’s not sadness, not exactly. More of an absence of strong feeling, a sort of emotional white noise that muffles everything. Indifference. That’s the word, perfectly weighted and utterly devoid of colour. Today, it felt particularly heavy, like the leaden sky.
The morning shift began with the usual rhythm. The familiar grind of the engine, the smell of stale coffee from the thermos, the constant low thrum of the radio chatter – traffic updates, news snippets, weather forecasts. It’s a relentless stream of information, always flowing, always demanding a sliver of attention. My eyes scan the streets, looking for a raised hand, a potential fare. The GPS barks out directions in its flat, synthetic voice, competing with the blare of a scooter passing too close. Each input is a tiny fragment of data, piled atop the last, forming a mountain of irrelevant facts that I have to somehow navigate. It’s overwhelming, this constant input, and perhaps that’s why I’ve built this wall of indifference. It’s a defense mechanism, I suppose, against the sheer volume of the world.
My first passenger was a businessman, sharp suit, even sharper phone call already in progress as he slid into the back. He spoke rapid-fire French mixed with English, discussing quarterly reports and market fluctuations. I drove him to La Défense, the towers reaching into the low clouds like cold, metallic fingers. I heard snippets of his conversation, the stress in his voice, the urgency of his words. I should have felt something – empathy, perhaps, or even annoyance at the intrusion. But there was nothing. Just the drone of his voice, another layer of sound in the symphony of the city’s data, easily filtered out by the wall.
The day continued in this vein. Passenger after passenger, each with their own destination, their own stories unfolding in fragments. A young couple giggling in the back, fresh from a Sunday outing; an elderly woman recounting her doctor’s visit; a tourist asking about the best crêpes. Their emotions were clear, vibrant – joy, worry, curiosity. They were real. I was merely the conduit, the temporary transporter. I nodded, offered perfunctory responses, my mind elsewhere, or perhaps, nowhere in particular, just observing. The taxi became a bubble, a moving observation deck from which I watched the world, but rarely felt a part of it.
Around noon, I picked up a woman near République, an artist, judging by the paint smudges on her jeans and the roll of canvas peeking from her bag. She asked to be dropped off at a specific address in the 11th arrondissement, a quiet street I didn’t frequent often. When we arrived, she paid, and I watched her walk towards what appeared to be an old studio building, its facade adorned with crumbling plaster and a heavy, ornate wooden door. She reached for the handle, pushed, then pulled. Nothing. She tried again, a slight frown creasing her brow. The door was undeniably locked. She rummaged in her bag, pulled out a key, tried that. Still no give. It was a proper, immovable barrier. She sighed, a small, frustrated exhalation, then turned back towards the street, probably to make a phone call.
It was such a minor incident. A locked door. A small inconvenience. But for some reason, it stuck with me. Maybe it was the visual metaphor of it, that immovable barrier. I watched her for a moment, then drove off, but the image lingered. It wasn’t a profound lock, not one guarding a treasure or a terrible secret. Just a simple, everyday locked door. Yet, it felt emblematic of something larger. A feeling of being on the outside, always. Looking in, but never quite gaining entry. I wasn’t frustrated by it, or even particularly sad for the woman. It was just… a fact. Another data point in the endless stream, albeit one that felt slightly more poignant in its ordinary finality.
I found myself thinking about all the doors I’ve encountered, literal and metaphorical. The doors of opportunity I hadn’t pushed, the doors to connection I hadn’t opened. Or perhaps, the doors that simply remained locked, regardless of my effort. It’s a thought that, had I been capable of strong emotion, might have evoked a pang of regret or longing. But through the veil of indifference, it was just an observation. A logical conclusion to a series of non-choices. I am 24, supposedly at an age of boundless energy and dreams, but I feel like an old man sometimes, already resigned to the way things are. This city, with its ancient stone and relentless pace, has a way of wearing you down, or perhaps, smoothing out your sharp edges until you’re just a pebble in a vast river.
The information overload doesn’t help. It’s like the world is screaming at me, but I’ve turned down the volume until it’s just a whisper. News headlines flicker on digital billboards – economic downturns, political scandals, distant wars. My phone buzzes with notifications from news apps, social media, messages from friends I rarely see. Each demands a response, a reaction, an opinion. But I have none. Or rather, the effort to form one feels too immense. Why bother? It will all be replaced by new information in an hour, then forgotten by tomorrow. The constant churn makes everything feel ephemeral, meaningless. My brain feels like a hard drive perpetually struggling to defragment, and so it just shuts down, opts for the low-power mode of indifference.
I tried to listen to a podcast during a lull, something about ancient history. Even that felt like too much, another voice, another layer of facts I couldn’t quite absorb. My mind drifted back to the locked door, then to the businessman’s phone call, then to the crêpe question. It’s a jumble, a mosaic of disconnected pieces. My reflection in the rearview mirror showed a tired face, my eyes scanning without truly seeing. I wonder if I’m losing something vital, some spark that allows people to care, to engage. Or perhaps this is simply maturity, a quiet acceptance of the world’s chaos without feeling the need to wrestle with it.
The evening rush hour was a blur of flashing lights and honking horns. Rain started to fall, a fine, persistent drizzle that made the streets shimmer under the lamplight. Passengers were eager to get home, their conversations now filled with the day’s anxieties and weariness. I listened, or rather, overheard, their frustrations about traffic, about demanding bosses, about what to cook for dinner. It was all so immediate, so tangible. I delivered them to their warm, lit-up destinations, then drove back into the cold, indifferent night, the rain blurring the lines of the city into abstract streaks of colour.
Back in my small apartment, the quiet was almost deafening after the day’s cacophony. I cooked a simple meal, ate it without much enjoyment, just the necessary fuel for another day. The persistent hum of the refrigerator was the loudest sound. I looked out my window at the familiar rooftops, the faint glow of the Eiffel Tower in the distance. It’s a beautiful city, undeniably so, full of life and history. And I am here, in the middle of it, yet somehow entirely apart. The indifference remains, a constant companion, neither comforting nor disturbing. Just… present.
I wonder if this feeling will ever lift, if a moment will come when something truly pierces through the fog. A moment of genuine joy, or anger, or profound sadness. I don’t actively wish for it, because even the desire to feel something is a feeling, and that seems like too much effort right now. For now, there’s only the quiet hum, the gentle drift. Another day passes, marked not by events or emotions, but by the steady accumulation of miles on the odometer and the endless, undifferentiated flow of information. The locked door, the constant noise – they were just moments. And I was just Peter, a taxi driver in Paris, existing.
Leave a Reply