12/31/2025
This image works because it compresses centuries of human values into a single subway bench.
On the left sits an Orthodox schema monk—a man who has reached the Great Schema, the highest and most demanding level of Eastern Orthodox monasticism. This is not simply a “religious outfit.” It represents a life almost completely stripped of the modern world.
To reach this stage, a monk usually spends decades in obedience, fasting, prayer, silence, and renunciation. Many schema monks live in near isolation. Some barely speak. Some sleep only a few hours a night. Their entire existence is oriented toward inner transformation rather than external achievement. Historically, people would travel for weeks or months to monasteries just to ask such a monk one question, believing his spiritual clarity came from a life emptied of distraction.
Now look at where he is sitting:
a metro car.
No monastery walls.
No desert cave.
No mountain hermitage.
Just plastic seats, fluorescent lights, and a moving city.
To his right sit two young women—representatives of a completely different modern reality. They are absorbed in their phones, earbuds in, eyes down. Their posture is relaxed but inward-facing. Their attention is fragmented across invisible networks: messages, feeds, timelines, algorithms. They are connected to thousands of people—and fully present with none.
No one is doing anything “wrong” here. That’s what makes the image powerful.
This is not about mocking technology or romanticizing asceticism.
It’s about contrast.
The monk represents a worldview where:
Meaning is found inward
Silence is valuable
Attention is sacred
Time is slow
Wisdom comes from subtraction
The phones represent a worldview where:
Meaning is external and constant
Silence is uncomfortable
Attention is monetized
Time is accelerated
Knowledge comes from accumulation
The monk likely knows nothing about trending news, viral videos, or social media outrage. Yet his inner life may be deeper than most people experience in decades. The women likely know everything that happened today—but may never experience stillness long enough to hear their own thoughts.
What technology and time have changed isn’t just how we live, but what we value.
We now prize:
Speed over depth
Access over presence
Information over wisdom
Visibility over meaning
The monk’s very existence challenges that shift. His clothing alone symbolizes death to ego, to identity, to modern relevance. In Orthodox theology, the Great Schema is sometimes called a “second baptism”—a symbolic burial of the self. That’s why the garments resemble funeral clothing. The monk has already practiced dying to the world.
And yet here he is—inside the world, riding alongside it.
That’s the quiet brilliance of the image.
It’s not a clash.
It’s a coexistence.
Two eras sharing the same bench.
Two definitions of “connection” sitting inches apart.
One life trained to look inward for truth.
Two lives trained to look outward for signal.
The image doesn’t ask which is better.
It asks a more unsettling question:
What have we gained—and what have we forgotten?
In a world where attention is constantly pulled outward, the monk is a reminder that the most radical act left may be to remain still.
