By Josie Woosnam
Immersed in my studies, I found myself trapped in a lonely, dark place buried within my thoughts. I couldn’t escape, but I admired the man who did. The man who took everything in as he went. He didn’t seem so absorbed in himself that he wasn’t able to notice the outside world around him. He seemed detached enough from his world that the interactions he had with others appeared so genuine. He could sit for hours alone in the booth by the window and take everything in without becoming overwhelmed. But just as easily as he could sit quietly alone, he could have a deep conversation with the person sitting next to him and not let it add to his own list of burdens.
Talking to him helped me escape from myself. There was some sort of unexplainable peace about him. The way he walked with a gentle flow as his graceful slow steps guided him from point a to point b painted a detailed picture of who he was as a person. When he would plop down into his daily booth, he would take out some tattered book always covered in notes within the margins. And every few minutes after being tranced by the words flying off the page and soaring around the room, he would look up. Slowly, he would turn his attention from himself and his thoughts to the noises surrounding him, then take them all in with a smile and continue happily reading. But somehow the buzz of people never seemed to bother him.
I longed for that feeling of peace and optimism about the world. The day when all of the pain I felt would be as if it never existed, and I could take in the beauty of the world around me and the deep pain and realize there’s beauty in that, too. I longed for the day when the hope that comes with light would overtake the overwhelming darkness that seemed to consume me at times. I knew I could never truly be as happy as the man who used to sit next to me, the gentle man who seemed never to let anything get to him, but after today I would try to be. I would try to be the man who saw everything as beautiful and found a way to be grateful even in the hardest of situations. I would strive to be the man who was always empathetic and put others before himself. Because after today, there would be one less person who not only saw that beauty in the world but was that beauty. The only thing sitting there in that empty booth would be the memories of the lives impacted by the man in the coffee shop.