I am writing this at the end of what was such a crappy day. Yet, I saw the most gorgeous sunset, so it couldn’t have been all that bad. And perhaps, it was the ride in a terribly overcrowded bus, in the midst of a really bad chaotic road day, in the evening that changed the tune of an off-key past 48 hours. Somewhere in that bus, packed to the extent that even a mosquito would find it hard to get in…as I stand near the steps, another woman enters the bus. She finds no place to hold on to for support, so she chooses the next best thing…my shoulder. And somehow, in the disappearing ashes of what seemed really like the dying hours…a little flicker in that simple gesture sparked some life. Instead of being exasperated with that lady, as I probably would have been on a better day, I couldn’t help but smile at her ingenuity…at her antics where she could hardly keep her balance in the two inch space…and then…I see the orange globe smiling at me outside. Smiling for a few minutes before spreading the sky with an ethereal glow. Simple things. Complex life. Or is it the other way around? Sometimes we all need a shoulder, and someone to send some sun to ease the wrinkles of an aged day…in some ways, this is a rather convoluted example of the same.
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I had a moment today on the bus today too. A better day than yours. I'm just back from Mexico (post to follow), and despite weeks of storms, it's been sunny. I went for a lavish lunch, courtesy of a friend. But she was running late, so she dropped me at a bus stop.
I hate taking the bus in San Francisco! But I got on and squeezed between an older Asian woman and a huge teenager. Turned on my iPod and prepared to zone out. When I realized the Asian woman was talking across the way to a man in sunglasses, who was talking in some language I didn't understand to a darker skinned kid (south Asian?) on the other side of me. And then she explained: the kid was studying Mandarin. She told me the story of coming to America when no one spoke any languages. And this brown-skinned kid was speaking flawless Chinese. The woman said her grandchildren couldn't speak it, just wanted to fit in.
A bunch of other little kids got on, one towheaded, another Asian kid playing videogames on a cell phone. But everyone was conversing, half in Chinese, the rest of us in awe. For a moment, I felt like I was part of a very international community.
Just another day should be published around the world to remind us to appreciate that we have shoulders to share with those who need them, and to make us unafraid to reach out when we need to.
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