“Middle finger to you — what really is your problem Brad?”
Meeting new people is risky business. You can never precisely know how it will turn out. Of course, good anticipation must be the universal posture for mastering the unfamiliar terrains we navigate in living. Our collisions — of every possible thing — leave us different; some alter our trajectory, some
only affect our mood for a minute, and some may torment us for a lifetime. It all depends. The sure point: in the aftermath, we are never the same person after we experience the things of this life — mostly people — particularly strangers, and to underpin that every person in your life starts as a stranger, sheds an even more interesting light.
There was nothing unique about encountering her; a mall is a place usually full of strangers passing by. If heading opposite directions, there’s that inevitable point of path-crossing and being close to each other means there’s greater likelihood of interaction — and that’s what occurred. In passing her, she was to my immediate left, her face within too close a range to mine; I could literally zoom into the tiny pixels of her smooth skin. For a split second, I was like Marlon Wayans in the movie Senseless — all things being magnified. The nearness, the stare, the zooming in, the body language, and the unuttered syllables of what was transpiring all made this encounter rather strange. And all of this in less than 5 seconds, literally. Soon as we passed each other, I turned back (I can only quantify it as
instinctual) to look at her. She also turned back to gaze at me…that eye-game lasting for about 3 seconds. Then she did it…She pulled up her middle finger, muttered some words, turned around and strutted away. I just didn’t know what had happened.
The same week, another day…
Kicking up my feet in the air, reclining from my swivel chair, I felt a good air of accomplishment — I had clocked in 3 hours on a client’s project; I would meet my imposed deadline. But whilst I was still basking in the feeling of victory, a party-pooper of a thought intruded my thoughts… “What really is your problem Brad?” It felt a tad awkward, something like an abrupt and intrusive thought, yet I knew exactly what that question was forcing me to probe. It was unequivocal; a certainty that had me trying
to face an undertone, a foreboding, an undercurrent that has been running through the parallels of my living for a while now. It had nothing to do with the encounter with that lady in the mall, nothing to do with me having made it through my client’s project — it had everything to do with an ongoing introspection that has been plaguing my conscience for a while now, only that this time around, the poignancy of the question had me trying to get to the bottom of it. And I have been on it since…
Anecdotes — our personal stories and experiences — yell the story of our lives; details that describe the devil that lurks in the concealed crevices of our lives, our hearts. From our hearts, the issues of our lives erupt — all of them. It’s no wonder the exhortation to guard diligently our hearts is a befitting measure we ought to action. The work to guard our hearts isn’t only in trying to keep evil away (that too) but it includes an awareness to realize that our every action and reaction springs up from what’s within us — it’s not what happens to us, really, it’s how we respond which matters: it’s the indication of what we harbor deeply within us.
Our expectations of others’, assessments of our scenarios, introspections of our internal environments, reactions to our encounters, and all the other stuff that eludes us — partly because of our ignorance — all serve to reveal us to ourselves. The real issue is “Can we appropriately see
ourselves to realize what we need to conquer of ourselves?”
Whatever happened in the brevity of the encounter with the lady to pull up her finger at me has nothing to do with her but everything to do with me. Of course, a poverty of naivety will not let me summate that everything that happens to us is our causative. No; that’s just not true. My highlight is
just that, we sit at the centre of what makes up our interactions and experiences — it’s us. And such an ownership is one that shall ever be an issue we must contend with because it’s easier to hang it onto someone else, something else, and some other force.
Ever since that problem question, it has been an ongoing wrestle to try to answer it accurately. I have many things, symptoms, indications, and hints of what it could be, all of it hinging on to wanting to optimize for the root cause than the fruit. Yet another question has been hitting me: “Where do you start in identifying what your real problem is?” “Do you start at the level of the body, soul, or spirit?”
Maybe you can help me here.
I just know that my story mirrors that of many.
If this affects you, my encouragement is that you find meaning from the plenty little and big happenstances in your living — that’s where life happens.
More power to you.
