I talked to a homeless woman on the bus the other day. I don’t usually make it a habit of talking to complete strangers but she initiated the conversation and was pleasant enough for me to continue it.
As much as I like social interactions I can be pretty distant and socially disconnected. For some reason, however, this woman got me thinking. This complete stranger got my brain going in a direction it hadn’t gone through in a while.
The homeless woman, she looked like she was once a pretty person. But now, she looked a little dirty, oily hair, slightly wasted, messed up teeth and dirty hands and nails. She was dressed appropriately and didn’t smell which was a good thing.
I have a tendency to avoid bums and the homeless. Not because they annoy me or bother me but for a rather odd and unexplainable fear.
This woman was very pleasant and I wasn’t afraid of her and therefore continued the conversation. There are people that sometimes look at bums and feel sorry for them. Sorry for their state, there obvious homelessness, the idea of how sad their life might actually be.
I don’t think I’ve ever really thought that way about a homeless person, feeling sorry for them, and while speaking to this woman, I realized that I don’t feel sorry for her.
What I noticed about this woman, aside from her obvious looks, was that she had a smile on her face. She wasn’t afraid of exposing her teeth and she didn’t really look like she cared if people looked at her.
It made me think, it made me ask, it made me wonder: how did she get to where she is now. How did her life lead her to this bus stop? To the very seat right next to me where we were both waiting for the bus to arrive?
Then, I asked the inevitable. How did I get to where I was? There, sitting in a bus stop bench, next to a homeless woman, waiting for the bus?
I had a car, I had my own form of transportation. One where I didn’t have to wait for what seems like endless minutes to get to my destination.
It’s not that I dread public transportation, or that I think it degrading. It’s just that going from having the ability to go to and fro whenever I wanted to having to wait and plan and schedule really sucks.
I don’t have the luxury of driving my own car anymore, for reasons that I may reveal in the future.
But the homeless woman made me realize that I could too end up in her seat if I don’t start getting my act together.
It’s so easy to mess up in this world, it’s so easy for life to throw you a curve ball and totally piss the point.
There are turning points for everyone. There are certain points in life when we get a chance to really look at what we are doing with our life before it goes to shit.
There is a point where we wake up and re-evaluate what we’re doing with ourselves, with our lives before we continue our destructive paths that we don’t even know we are following.
When are those points? I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure, I’m hopeful at least, that we get more then one. I mean, truth be told, there are so many places and ways in which we can screw up life right?
I think I found one of my major points towards the end of 2008.
It was an awakening that made me realize that I had been “asleep” this whole time. Let’s just say that I had forgotten myself. I had forgotten what I wanted out of my life, what I was working for and where I was going.
Luckily, I woke up before I woke up some years later asking the same question I’m asking now, how did I get here, only in worse situations than the now.
As easy as life can be to follow, it can be just as hard to lead. No one said that it would be easy, your 20’s, your 30’s, and so forth. But that’s part of the challenge, to take on whatever is thrown at you and learn to deal.
As I write, so many sayings are rushing in and out of my brain: “Kill or be killed,” or “survival of the fittest,” and my all time favorite, “life is what you make it!”
I guess we can’t really know where we will all end up. But we can at least plan, work hard for that destination, and always remember and keep in mind who we are, where we are going, and who we want to be.
For now, I’ll take things day by day, work on point A to get to point B and just hope for the best.