A funny thing happened on the way to work…
This morning I woke up to the whispering of my little ones, and as I tried to focus on the time, I realized that at that very moment I should have been at work checking my emails! “Oh Crap!” I thought and then dragged myself to my computer so I could warn my boss of my inevitable and surely stupendous tardiness.
You know how I take the train to work right? Not the subway, but an actual, real train. Anyways, when I am on said train, I like to relax by listening to my iPod, putting up my feet, leaning my head on the window, and closing my eyes – it’s literally the one place that I feel like I can let go of all my responsibilities and just be – albeit for only 45 minutes, but you know, you take what you can!
This morning, however, I had to wonder if kindness was a blessing or a curse, as an old man decided to sit next to me and then proceeded to ask me question after question for most of the train ride, until he eventually fell asleep. He had previously attempted to speak to someone else on the train and when she blatantly ignored him, I assume that he thought my friendly disposition looked inviting and moved himself to the seat next to mine. He seemed so lost though, that I felt a lot sad for him, and as he realized that I was also going to be taking the subway and getting off at the same station as him, his face literally lit up!
I looked at him and thought of my grandfather, who sadly died of cancer some years ago, and I thought of how we all so dependent on one another, and how this man, who at one time probably traveled to places completely foreign to him and did not feel intimidated, was now totally overwhelmed merely by the city’s transit system. We got off the train and headed to the subway – it was a sloooooow walk – I talked to him along the way, reassuring him that it was totally ok that we were walking about a million miles slower than everyone around us, and then I smiled at how worried he was that everyone was so fast and he was not able to keep up, and how he kept looking at me, I imagine, to make sure that I didn’t leave him.
When we finally parted ways, after I had taken more than half and hour to do something that normally takes me less than 10 minutes, he looked at me and said that he had courage knowing that I was there with him… I was glad at that moment, to have this soft heart.
