So here we go. It's hard not to take the "if-you're-not-for-us-then-you're-against-us" attitude these daze. However, I'm trying not to. For the folks who are ignorant though they know better, from me they receive the root of the adjective by which I've described them.
I'm a night person who has trouble finding others like me. I'm a watchman. I stay up late hoping I'll be given the opportunity to help the world. Most times I simply reflect upon the pursuit of peace. It's a lonely job, but I'm an unyielding optimist about it. I realize even when I complain that things could be worse.
I'm thinking that maybe, just maybe, I really am courageous. As so many people are lost to the day from the night, as so many people see the light and take it as an indicator that truth has fled the darkness, I insist on being awake when no one else is. Because the truth is these daze, that truth is hidden in darkness. Maybe that's the signal people need to embrace the night.
There is an entire continent's worth of love inside me that I'm just waiting to pass on to anyone with a minute to spare. Maybe I've looked at you in the past from the perspective of stranger to stranger and thought you looked like the perfect recipient of what I've got to give. Chances are though, we never wound up interacting and I wound up feeling like it was a shame we didn't. Even if it isn't with each other, do you think we could make a deal right here to reach out to someone sometime somewhere?
Ben and I rode trains together and spoke of isolation and wishing we could pack each other in suitcases to be taken home and enjoyed. We are physical miles apart, but aware that this is not strong enough to stifle our shared goals. Riding on trains and wishing for courage to reach out, or that someone would teach us courage by example, we met Nancy.
She taught us at least some of the courage we sought to learn. Mere seconds after our lonely bitching was interrupted by the train's halt at our destination, she approached us and asked if her eyes looked messed up. She was young, and shared so quickly a snapshot of her life and dreams. Nancy worried about her strict Mexican mother discovering that she had been drinking and told us she thought her chauvinistic co-workers had drugged one of her drinks.
Then, she told Ben that his eyes were pretty, that she worked at a Mexican restaurant, and that she planned on going to college. She repeated the question of whether her eyes looked messed up and we told her again that only the one did. We learned that she loved her culture and wants to one day marry a "hot Latino boy". As she said this, she was simultaneously worrying what her repressive mother would think of her messed up eyes, and we suggested she feign sickness and head straight to her room.
She thanked us and told us how cool and nice we were and we said the same about her. We talked with her for only a short while and in that time she embodied and displayed what we were both searching for. She was courage and strength. She was a walking dream and a waiting slice of compassion. She was honorable as she struggled to remain awake, actively combatting some substance that she may or may not have desired to imbibe.
This young woman was an answer to our secular prayer and we knew it at once. After we exchanged a friendly farewell, as she walked slowly away from us, it was difficult to determine whether she was real or a necessary illusion like some kind of wraith or mirage, a subtle trick of our minds that, rather than frustrating us, gave us power to press onward. Yes, I wanted to be the way Nancy invited us to perceive her: possibly a bit lost, but open-eyed and ready, primed for new experiences and undaunted by the city blocks that lay ahead.
*Note: This was written in greater Detroit and based on an experience that a friend and I had with a woman on an El train in Chicago.
