Or … “A Telling Story” … ?? Hmmm …
Have you ever found yourself simply wondering what someone’s “story” is?
There’s an Einstein Brothers deli not too far from work, and I often grab a quick “soup, bagel, and schmeer” take-out for lunch. More often than not, each time I’m there, I see a 40-something man sitting at a table … arms crossed on top of the table, cup of coffee in front of him, sad empty eyes staring blankly and trance-like at his tabletop or the floor in front of him, sometimes a coat hanging on the back of his chair, disheveled hair but yet he’s always rather neatly dressed in what seems to be the same pair of blue jeans and a long-sleeve gray sweatshirt … He doesn’t look like what you would typically call “destitute”, yet he does look … lost.
Lost.
Lost how? By choice or by circumstance? Questions run through my mind. Where does he belong? Does he have a place to go? Is he part of the aftermath of the economic downturn in recent years … is he one of what the media refers to as “the new homeless”? Is he escaping something or someone? Is he a parent and waiting for one of the kids behind the counter to finish his/her shift? Or does he simply go to Einstein’s for coffee every day? His presence paints a silent picture. What’s his “story”?
What’s your “story” … what’s my “story” … ? Whether we’re aware of it or not … or even like it or not … each person tells a story that others read. Take a look around you … who and what do you see? The businessman sitting across the aisle in the gate area at the airport … the woman in the car alongside yours on the highway … the children with their faces and hands pressed against the sea aquarium glass wall … the senior citizen staring out the window in the library … the gardener watering plants at the nursery … the cashier at the grocery silently ringing-up your purchases … the storytellers and their stories are all around us, every day. And you and I are storytellers as well.
