Rushing Rush Hour

  What is the rush in rush hour? I think this is a question worth considering, as so many associate rush hour with rushing to get home. Is it always that dinner is waiting on the table, or is there some other reason why people are frantic in the late hours of the day to get home?
   When I no longer feel that I need to get ahead of anyone else and can even take my time in getting home, something different happens. I feel more relieved, and more of a sense of not having to do anything or even communicate with anyone to feel connected. Connection with others doesn't come from having to struggle to be 'equal' to them, but rather it comes from the felt sense that awareness itself is already a connection.
    I have often felt that in urban life in particular, there is a kind of pressure to connect, as though we have internalized the understanding that we are not connected already. I get it into my head that in order to connect with others, there needs to be something that will allow me to keep up with them in some way, such as the same pace, the same status, the same education, and so on. Never does it occur to me that in the moment that I am aware of others, there is already a connection in mind, and there is no 'struggle to connect'. This awareness is never separate from me. For instance, if a person leaves the room, does this mean that they walk away from awareness? How is  it possible for any phenomena to exist without awareness? On the other hand, do we say that 'my mind' walks away from 'your mind', only to 'connect' later? I think that this is the folk belief that I have--namely, that my mind is a separate entity, rather than the totality of all the phenomena and functioning.
   The sense that there is already mind here and now should come as a relief. I am not trying to get my awareness back from someone who just left the room! Think about this, and sit on it for a while. Is there need to panic when the crowds rush ahead of 'you'? Where is the crowd, where is 'ahead', where is you?