Today, a well presented and composed young man said to me really calmly "Do you ever get the feeling you're about to be killed, like you're about to die?" For a split second I felt my life flash before my eyes. I never imagined something like that happening and I half expected him to pull out a gun, and then I just felt calm, frozen and still, almost as though I was surrendering to the inevitable. And then I realised, after a few minutes that it was a rhetorical question and that he was talking about himself and his own fears.
For the first few minutes I had been a bit numb and blocked out his voice, and my eyes were fixed on his hands and where they were tracing beneath his coat, and I was trying to work out possible manoeuvres, reflexes, dives, rolls, literally anything that I could do in the worst case scenario. I wasn't listening to him, and instead I was calmly working out my escape route. Then when I did listen, I realised that there was actually nothing to run from. I wasn't in any danger. And slowly I started to feel my brain functioning and blood flowing again. I stayed listening to him for the next ten to fifteen minutes. I didn't say anything, I just listened. And then I started to feel sad, guilty and embarassed about the judgement that I had made because he had asked me a question. Yes, a weird and strange question at that, but a question that was important to him. A question he probably asks himself every other minute or second of the day.
After listening to him. Really listening to him talk about how he feels ridiculed and misunderstood by people, I told him I had to go and went back home to compose myself before leaving to start my journey again. That situation reminded me of why I wanted to write The Glue. I want to look deeper into every day dynamics that can have perpetual effects on the ways in which we view each other, judge each other and interact with each other. In those brief minutes that I stood listening to a stranger, whose only way to reach out and communicate his fears, however unconventional to most, I learned and gained a lot. And in some way, maybe my silence, for those twenty minutes was all that he needed at that time. I think in a strange way, we both helped each other and I am sure it gave both of us a slightly different outlook on life even if the situation was an extraordinary one.
That is what I want to achieve through The Glue, and I think after today, I am more determined than ever.
Sometimes we all just need a bit of time. And as Seth says
"Time is all we have"
