A Conversation While Waiting for the Bus

     Yesterday while my sister and I were waiting for the bus, a man carrying a large pack of paper towels, a plastic bag and a sparkly pink purse meant for his daughter walked up to us. He asked us how long we had been waiting for the bus and my sister told him that the bus would be there in 15 minutes. The man seemed disappointed and annoyed at how slow the bus was but then quickly got over it. He then began the conversation. "I'm not trying to start a conversation but the Indian parade was yesterday but I missed it so I went to the pakistani parade". Having both been taught not to talk to strangers Heidi and I just said "cool" and then continued to ignore him. He kept talking "I love talking to different people from different cultures and learning about things, I have rich friends and middle class friends and poor..." he paused. "My daughter showed me this documentary on Mumbai, India and the people there are living terribly. We think that we have poor people here but over there it's really bad. It made me tear up to see them and Im not usually one to tear up but to see them like that really touched my heart". I interjected and said "yeah, seeing things like that really makes you realize how lucky you are". When I said it I don't think I really meant it. It was just the thing that I said whenever anyone talked about other people's poverty. This man accepted it and said "I wake up every morning and am thankful for everything I have". I could tell he really meant it. The fact that he was so thankful for the things he had made me think. Here was a man who was living in far worse circumstances than I was and he was still able to wake up EVERY morning and thank the world for letting him existing in it. I, who had everything I could ever possibly need, had the gaul to question whether I deserved to live in the world instead of being thankful that I do. This man had fewer resources but he was living a fuller life than I was. He then proceeded to talk about the fact that we wanted travel the earth and "feel the earth". He said that when he was little he was always asking questions.
     At one point in the conversation he started talking about his writing. He said that when he was young he messed around with gangs and guns and drank a lot and did drugs and the thing that got him out of that world was writing. He said that if it hadn't been for the poetry he wrote he could have ended up in jail. I had a very interesting feeling when he said that. Part of me froze and started panicking because this man was a former gang member and he could pull out a gun at any second and shoot us because he could be crazy. My mind was going at a mile a minute. But then the other side of my mind just kept think that this was amazing because this man who had a completely different background and life than me still had the same kind of ideas that I had about wanting to learn and explore the world. As we continued our conversation on the but it just became more and more clear that we really weren't that different. He talked about how he felt about religion. H said he wasn't any specific religion and that he only went to church once in his life but he realized that his religion was in his heart. He visited Buddhist temples and mosques and all of the different services that he could experience and he would just take what he liked and add it to what he believed. I am pretty sure that I explained this exact description to my friends of what my religion was.
     As he got up to get off the bus and said, " Maybe you'll see me again, it was nice talking to you". For the rest of the bus ride and on the walk home I was so excited by the conversation with this man. I feel as though lately especially things had been happening to me to make it clear that I should be here and I have a purpose. The things we talked about were exactly thing things I had been questioning and worrying about and coming across all summer. It was an incredibly eye opening experience. I am glad the bus took so long to get to our stop.