In this heartbreaking story, Thornton Wilder illustrates the importance of being present throughout life and emphasizes the necessity for people to actually “look” at the world around them. After the late Emily Webb travels back to an ordinary day in her old life, in regret she cries, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?” (Wilder, 108) Our Town awakens one’s senses to the world before them. The action that troubled Emily the most about her existence was the lack of people intentionally noticing one another. She cried “I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another” (Wilder, 108). The lack of intentionality in everyday life sickened Emily to the point that she wanted to return to her