Nobody's Watching, Everybody's Home

Every window on the block is lit up tonight Every screen in every hand is glowing bright More people reachable than any century has known And somehow this is the loneliest we've ever grown

Nobody's watching, everybody's home Nobody's watching, everybody's alone Together in the numbers, apart in the room Every signal sent, and still so little land

For most of the time our species has existed We lived in bands of a hundred, maybe fifty listed Names you knew by face, by voice, by walk Every one of them a person you could actually talk to

Now the number in your pocket runs into the thousands Followers, contacts, a whole crowd of strangers But the mind still counts the way it always has A shortlist, a real list, the ones who'd come if you called

Nobody's watching, everybody's home Nobody's watching, everybody's alone The crowd got bigger, the circle stayed the same size The circle stayed the size it's always been built to hold

Connection simply changed its shape, that's the honest claim Thinner, wider, a river spread out across a plain Instead of one deep channel carrying the weight A hundred shallow streams that barely reach the gate

There's a name for what a village used to give for free A hundred hands, a hundred eyes, a hundred kinds of company A whole net woven loosely, wider than one best friend carrying it all So nobody bears the whole weight, so nobody has to hold the rest

Nobody's watching, everybody's home Nobody's watching, everybody's alone The real problem is the net got thin, right where the weight comes down

So call the one person, don't just scroll their name Show up at the door instead of liking what they've made Human wiring grew up around a fire, a few faces, a few real bonds Long before anyone dreamed up an audience of thousands

Nobody's watching, everybody's home Nobody's watching, everybody's alone Turn one screen around into a door somebody opens Turn one glowing window into a room somebody's in

Every window on the block could still light up the same But this time let a few of them actually know your name Just the old, small, warm math a person understands Simpler than an audience, a feed, or a thousand distant hands