Listening

I often listen to conversations around me. I don’t exactly mean to eavesdrop but I think I get this from my mother. She used to love to get involved in the stories of people she didn’t know. Sometimes I’d catch her leaning so far over in a restaurant booth to hear the conversation at the next table I’d be afraid she’d fall off the chair. And she was really genuinely interested. She wanted to hear what the answer was.. Did that woman get a good report from the doctor? Did the girl get fired after she forgot to go to work?

I remember standing with Mama at the entrance to the tarmack at the airport in Charlotte NC back in the day when loved ones could wait right by the door where people got off the airplane. We were awaiting my sister flying in from Utah, but my mother, as anxious as she was to see her own daughter, watched other families embrace their loved ones, and she cried tears of joy for them.

The thing is, people say things you just can’t make up. My mother was a born gatherer of stories, and I suppose I am too. Today I sat in the waiting area of the Honda place waiting for an overdue oil change. I’d already examined the coffee machine that was broken and looked half-heartedly at a few job offerings online. Two men sat across the room from each other. One was tall and restless, the other shorter, quieter. They began to talk. It turns out they both grew up nearby and played basketball for neighboring high schools. They talked about that for a bit. Then the tall man asked the other, “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m an Uber driver,” the shorter man said. “Oh.” said the tall one. “I’m a petroleum engineer and I worked for a French billionaire in California.” The Uber driver nodded politely.

“Have you ever gotten away from here?” the engineer asked.

“No. I’ve traveled some, but I always come back,” said the Uber driver. The mountains.. They're in my blood.”

“This place sucks,” said the engineer. “I can live without the mountains. Colorado’s a cesspool. I want to go back to California.”

I was pulled away from this conversation by the mechanic who wanted to talk about my front brakes. I wanted to hear more. My heart was with the Uber driver who felt the mountains call him and I wondered at the other man who was apparently financially successful but not all that happy. They both started out here but went such different directions. Which one has had the richer life?

It’s not really my business. On the other hand, I heard somebody else say this week that nothing is ever an accident.. The people you meet in a day, the things that happen, everything has some reason for being. I want to think this is true, though I don’t know if it is.

But maybe these two men did raise such an important question. There is something to be said for being rooted, for belonging somewhere. It may be that some people who spend their entire lives traveling the globe and doing things rich and powerful people do are really just searching for a home. That may be. It may be that home is, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, within ourselves, no matter where we are, if f we become still enough to listen to the inner voice that calls us.