I’ve met a sad person today. I was introduced to her and shook her hand and everything seemed normal until I looked her in the eyes. My smiled faded at the moment our faces recognized each other – mine, of endless optimism and her of endless sorrow. So different and still existing in the same world. And I wondered how it can be? We are sharing the same existence, yet we exist in it in a completely different ways. I know what Sadness is, I tasted it myself many times before, and for sure I will be flirting with it for many more times in my lifetime. But to make her my lover? that is something that I am completely unable to do.
When I sink down, when I feel the weight of the world pressing down on me; when I feel I cannot take another breath of it? I smile. I smile and its gone. I smile because I know that this world is so much more than what I can grasp. I laugh at my own thoughts and illusions of knowledge and understanding I created for myself. I laugh because the only real thing? the only certain truth is that I know nothing. I am so small.
There are so many things happening this very second, only on this planet alone. Just imagine: winds are blowing; oceans rising and moving, waves crushing on the shores; trees blossoming because it was a sunny day; clouds shifting slowly to some other countries, moving effortlessly from one continent to another; volcanoes warming up somewhere deep underground; birds migrating back from their winter shelters; little kittens finding their way out of the boy they thought was their world until just minutes ago; their mother watching them, remembering her first explorations; people dying and babies being born; children learning to walk and talk and play and dance and sing; millions of people fighting for a better world and millions more destroying it in an endless game most of us are not even aware of; friendships are being made this very second; a couple just broke up and at the same time someone fell madly in love for the very first time, right this very second.
Who am I in the midst of all this? Who am I to be sad? Who am I to be so sure that my thoughts and my own vision of the world are right? What if I?m wrong? What if everything does happen for a reason? What if everything makes sense in the end and all I need to do is to be patient and a little bit stronger? What if this hurt and sadness that I feel is nothing more than a big misunderstanding between me and the world? What if this feeling that world has forgotten about me is just a miss-fortunate mix-up and my big break is just behind the corner? What if Life is just trying to prepare me for the things to come? What if I need to go through this to become strong enough for whatever lays ahead? What if all He wants is for me to appreciate the good and happy days when they come?
For how could I ever feel happiness if I never felt sorrow? How could I measure the greatness of things if I did not taste the bitterness of it all?
I don’t know, that is the truth. And I don’t even pretend I understand, but these are the things that run through my head and I have to smile. My sorrow just dissolves in that smile… I let it drown in the great, beautiful vastness of the Universe I am just a tinny part of, but equally important and precious as anything and anyone else?
I was never depressed in my life and in a sense I wish I was because I could understand this sad girl in front of me better. I can feel that my smile and my good intentions are not reaching through. I would do anything to help this person right now, to make her understand that there is nothing to be sad about, that life doesn?t want anything from her except for her to be happy.
And at that moment something changes. She looks at me again for a split second I can see that she found something in my eyes that I did not know how to give. And she took it in – a precious gift from a stranger. She did not say anything but I felt that she offered that weight that was pressing her down… she offered it back to the world through me, somehow. Words fail me here, for they are merely symbols of what they represent but, my look and my good intentions chipped some of her sorrow away. It would never have happened if she wasn?t ready to drop it, but it would have never happened without someone who cares near her. I was a stranger and I will never see her again, but she left a mark on me that will last forever. I can only hope I left a positive mark on her as well and that she will remember that even strangers care and that friend can be found anywhere, if you’re looking.
