Everyday I take the train to work. Most days the 50 minute train ride is uneventful, I nap or read the news on the way into town. On the way home I get my nose into whatever good book I'm reading, typically the time passes quickly and quietly.
Yesterday I had the privilege of peering into a stranger's life in a deeply intimate way.
At first I was annoyed that he was talking on the phone. Great, I thought, another poor bastard, among the rest of us poor bastards, droning on about his miserable life. What can I say, my compassion for my fellow man and his suffering is often lacking, but that's another story for another time.
I was finding it difficult to focus on the book in my hands, so I decided to give up, wait until he finished his conversation, and then dive back in.
So I listened, at first he was talking work, his job in sales where he was making decent money with decent perks, his future prospects in management, his troubles dealing with his superiors and their limited imagination when it came to teamwork and strategy.
Then he began talking about his daughter. "Can you believe she's already 17?" He talks about how he worries about where she goes, who she associates with. His hopes for her future.
Then things took a turn. How would he explain to her why he and his wife separated? How could he tell her that her mother was a cruel and selfish person? That she cheated on him? No. He wouldn't tell her. She didn't need to know. He'd say that her mother and him were at different places in life, and that things weren't going to work out.
His wife had said "You aren't enough for me anymore". You could hear his voice shake, dripping with contempt. He didn't have definite proof that she was cheating on him, but the man wasn't stupid, all the signs were there, his wife wasn't exactly hiding it well. She broke up with him, probably out of guilt, and he decided he wanted nothing to do with her.
Though she was still interested in him, she wanted to know where he was going, what he was doing. She said "Hope you have a great time", he said "Yeah, and why don't you go play in traffic?" Then walked away.
I kept my face on my book. I didn't want to bring attention to the fact he was talking. I acted as if I could not have been more lost in the story between the pages. I hoped he would relax, not feel rushed to end his conversation to spare the strangers around him. I made myself invisible in the seat beside him.
At this point I wondered who he was talking to, it was hard to tell, who could he pour out all this to? I decided it was a close family member, by the steady "love you too" that punctuated the conversation's end.
Things took another turn, he shifted away from his ex-wife, distancing himself from the anger and sadness that had begun to well up. He was going on his third date tonight, with a lovely young woman, a elementary school teacher. He was non-committal, the wounds from his ex-wife were still fresh, he wasn't really interested in dating, but this chance meeting with the teacher was going well. She had told him to bring his overnight bag.
At this point the train ride was coming to an end. I glanced over at the man, who had been sharing his most intimate thoughts for nearly an hour. He was good looking, late 30s, in decent shape, you could tell he ate well and hit the gym, you could tell from his conversation that he was a kind and thoughtful man, a respectable man. The kind of guy any woman today would be lucky to have. In one hand he held the phone to his head, and in the other a bouquet of flowers for his date.
And so the wheel of the world continually turns over. A story of an upstanding, good looking, hard working man, who was dedicated to his wife and daughter, burned by a selfish and cruel woman, cast into chaos by her infidelity. Of course there are two sides to every story, but I think his perspective is sufficient to demonstrate the lesson.
No man is ever enough, AWALT.
Thanks for reading. I'll say to you what I said to this man as we stepped away from the train platform.
"Good luck"
Submitted July 28, 2018 at 07:23AM by Neuroentropic_Force https://ift.tt/2LKcbkp
No comments:
Post a Comment