As I was walking home from my favorite pop-up bakery downtown, lost in thought, my brain somewhat registered a city minibus double parked on the street, the kind that transports elderly and people with special needs to appointments and shops. It was letting someone off, who was thanking another person, perhaps the driver. When I was past, I was pulled out of my head when I clearly heard a male voice, probably the person who had just gotten off, saying,
“I care about you, you know.”
The person said it with emphatic kindness, a declaration. He was not asking if the person understood how he felt about him/her, he was making sure that person knew it.
At the moment the statement registered as almost cute or tender, like what a child might say. If a child had said that to me, I would rationally get that he or she was telling me a sweet sentiment, but it wouldn’t register emotionally, because kids say those kinds of things often. It’s truly shameful how their angelic goodness is wasted on jaded adults.
I reflected on how sweet it was that this gentleman was making sure the driver understood his appreciation and caring for him or her. I thought how unusual it was to say that or to hear that. How many times does someone that you don’t love and/or live with say, “I really care about you”? Or, taking it down a few notches and couching the sentiment within socially acceptable norms, “Are you doing ok?”
A week ago while I was sucked in the Instagram vortex I find myself in at least once a day, I came across a video that I loved for many reasons. (Spoiler alert). It’s the holidays, so it’s sappy-sweet just in time. It’s improbably an advertisement for a pub in Ireland, and it made me love it more because it seemed like a homegrown video for a local pub, not like something produced by a large marketing firm to boost sales for a chain of pubs. At the end a quote from Yeats appears on the video: “There are no strangers here, only friends you haven’t met,” which was the perfect summary of what the video seemed to be trying to convey.
My eyes mist over each time I watch the video (and, yes, I do know it’s an ad for a pub–even more kudos to the team who wrote the story line). I nearly cry because it highlights loneliness. And I can’t abide by loneliness, in kids and especially the elderly. And the star of this video is a little old widower. When he tips his hat to two young women who don’t notice him or (shame on them) ignore him, my heartstrings are tugged. And then I hold back tears while simultaneously being angry when the guy at the bus stop gestures to the widower to keep moving, I have no time for you. And that’s it. That feeling he must’ve felt, this fake widower in a pub ad–yes I get it, but it still landed–that blatant message, I have no time for you. Who does that? To an old man, woman, child, or anyone?
Me, I do. Or did. As I watched the video again and was even more mad at the guy at the bus stop, my mind (or was it my conscience) flashed to a scene a few weeks earlier of an old man in a green scarf and gray jacket Tim and I passed on the sidewalk. We were walking probably three times as fast as this gentleman, as was our dog who was pulling us down the sidewalk. As we sped past the older man, my mind registered that his body had opened toward us, a slight movement of his shoulder and upper body, a slow and subtle turn towards us; he was probably intending to say hello, maybe chat. But we were already five steps past him when this flash of a thought registered.
There are different ways to convey feelings. There are people who can directly say, “I care about you.” And there are people who will share a beer with a stranger in a bar. I do not want to be the type of person who conveys, I don’t have time for you. I’ll stare down every old person I walk by now, and when they turn ever so slightly towards me, I’ll stop mid-stride and exclaim, “Hello! How are you!” (No, I won’t do that. But I might.) Loneliness sucks. I want to lessen it, not add to it. Excuse me while I run downtown and look for an old man in a green scarf.