Ordinary People

I have been talking with one of my clients about using his imagination when he is in a crowd.  I am not writing this post about my client, by the way, so there will be no confidentiality breached.  This individual has anxiety and I suggested this approach: when you are confronted by a crowd of people, especially in a contained space, focus on perhaps a half-dozen individuals, no more.  Now try to imagine what their lives might be like today.  Is this woman coping with a potentially lethal cancer diagnosis?  Maybe she just got the news?  Now how about that man over here?  Has he just lost his job?  Maybe the young man with the skateboard over here has just written a film script?  That woman hunched over her laptop?  Could she be composing an apology to her partner who caught her cheating?

Every life is unique.  We all seem the same: you know, five fingers on each hand, five toes on each foot.  We were all born, we all have mothers and fathers.  We all want to get from one place to the other during the day.  We all get tired and want to sleep at night.  We all get hungry.  We all need to be loved.  We are each a unique and irreplaceable interpretation of our humanity.  The driver who nearly cut me off on a walk signal?  She could be very worried and anxious about her son who is being preyed on by a criminal gang?  The person who almost knocked me over while crossing the street?  She might be just hitting menopause and was being thrown off balance by a hot flash?  Or maybe totally different things are going on in their lives.

In any crowded place, be it a sidewalk, a restaurant, a bus, a shopping mall, we have stories, tons and tons of stories; we have a living library of lives being lived; of hearts being broken, of small victories being won, of news of a longed for pregnancy, regret or simple relief from an abortion, of people falling in and out of love, of survivors of war and disaster, of unsung heroes performing random acts of kindness, of unknown artists creating works of wonder and original beauty, of dreamers, of saints, of villains and scoundrels.  This is better, or worse, than kaleidoscopic, this is a seething, living and weltering mosaic of life, wonder, cruelty, beauty and banality.

We all live lives of concealed wonder.  Many of us have unfortunately forgotten this.  Some drink or use drugs to recover what remains tantalizingly just beyond their reach.  Some look for a higher purpose.  Some simply look for purpose.  Others simply want to survive and pass on their genes.   I say that each person, every one of us, is a purpose, and step by step we are all being revealed.