We all travel a road where we try to get somewhere. We have plans, ideas, looking for the right exit.
But sometimes, the right play is to keep driving, sleep when you are tired and eat when you are hungry, until you get to the destination you wanted to get to in the first place.
But there are no turn around lanes on this highway, just a lonely road of twists and turns that anger, confuse and sometimes sadden us.
But the road continues on and we have to travel to places where we intend to go even if the path is long and winding.
The last month or so, I’ve seen my friends come close, my acquaintances move further away and the people who would back my plays actually back my plays.
And it feels good.
Yesterday the boss called me up out of nowhere to tell me that I had been doing an exceptional job on the project that I was working on.
Did he have to? No.
Did it make me want to drive further on the road, probably.
Because the road is whatever you want it to be, your career, family or your play at the tables. You have choices and sometimes you get lost making the left turn at Albuquerque.
But you never lose by taking the trip. Sometimes the best trips are down to the store where you learn something just by watching someone.
This evening I had a moment like that. It started at a mirror at a retailer. I passed by the mirror and looked at my face. Not at the person, but at the face. And in some cases, I didn’t recognize who I was. I saw the body, but not the soul. But I saw the maturity and the gray hair that had accompanied my receding hairline.
I’m not 40 and I look like this.
But as I’m trying this year to look at the gold and not the just the wood slivers in my soul, I saw a man.
A man pushing a cart down the aisle. His hair was mussed and he smelled of urine. He was obese and looked like his life was challenged enough in the first place.
He had a box of cereal, and a spoon in his cart and he paid with pennies and change, refusing all help from the checker and myself.
“This is the road I’ve chosen and I’ll go as I please,” he said as he was escorted from the store.
The man was happy in what he had, and I couldn’t understand that.
Why would he be happy as miserable as he looked and probably was? Where did he live and what did he do?
But as I ran out of the store to look for the man in the snow and the ice, he had disappeared.
Was he there in the first place I thought as I slugged the groceries to the car?
But I realized that the road I was on wasn’t one that made me happy at all.
And that realization was the beginning of it all.
Categories: My Writing... Tags: Choices, Homeless, My Writing..., The Man
Posts
