the light rail and a glove

via

The other day, I was downtown getting ready to take the light rail back home.  They just opened up a new line that goes all the way out to the airport (YES.) and since I don’t go downtown very often, I didn’t realize that the new “A” line to the airport starts at a different station than the rest of the city’s lines.

There were lots of people standing around, including several security guards, presumably to help people navigate the details of the new line.  I glanced briefly at the directory but decided it was just easier to ask a human how to get to the old station.

I approached an older security guard and said, “Excuse me, sir.”

I don’t think he actually heard me, or if he did, he didn’t realize it was directed to him, but I continued anyway.  “How do I get to the line for the Southmoor station?”

Now maybe it was because of the coke bottle sunglasses I was wearing and he thought they looked comical, or maybe it was just because I was nowhere near the right place, but either way he broke into a smile/chuckle.  I sheepishly asked, “I’m not in the right place, am I?”

“No, that’s okay.  You made me smile—I needed to smile.”  He kindly led me to the escalators and said, “Go down the escalator and walk all the way to the end.   You’ll pass several more escalators but keep going until you get to the last one.  Go back up and you’ll see the station right there.  I believe Southmoor is the 'E' line.”

I thanked him and went on my way.  I felt like a million bucks.  I could have figured it out on my own by studying the directory more closely or by googling it.   But if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to make that guy smile and he wouldn't have been able to remind me that chivalry isn't dead.

I got my ticket and boarded the train and (after getting off at two different stations because I may have possibly gotten the wrong ticket and may or may not have gotten on the wrong line) I finally arrived at the Southmoor station.  It was nearing 5 p.m. so the station was swarming with people.  I had my earbuds in and sunglasses still on (classic public-transportation-personal-bubble-creator) but as I stepped down from the train car, I noticed a man in front of me drop his glove.

It all happened within a matter of seconds: I see the glove fall to the cement, I glance up to locate its owner whose hands are full and who doesn’t seem to notice that he dropped anything, and then all in one motion I swoop down to grab the glove while pulling at my earbuds and calling, “Sir! You dropped your glove!”  He doesn’t seem to hear me, so I say it again while running after him and then, to my utter amazement, a hand suddenly pops out of nowhere from behind a directory, stops the glove’s owner, and points to me.

“You dropped your glove,” I say to the man who dropped his glove, trying to catch my breath.  For the second time that day, I see a big smile break across a stranger’s face.

“Thank you so much,” he says.  It was so simple, but one of the most genuine thank you’s I’ve ever heard.

I never did see the face of guy who stopped the glove’s owner, but I felt like we had become truly human for a moment.  You know, teaming up to help a random stranger even though we were only strangers ourselves.  The glove probably cost less than $5, but the encounter was priceless.

That’s the end of my light rail story.

But I’ve been thinking.  We all know that technology is taking over, distracting us from reality, draining the life out of our relationships, blah, blah, blah.  We all know this.  We hear the anti-technology message (ironically) shouted from videos and Facebook and articles everywhere.  It’s nothing new, yet nobody has thrown away their iPhones or laptops—least of all myself.  The problem continues to grow and persist.

I had an interesting conversation the other day with someone in their 40’s about where society is headed.  Millennials are tech-savvy and tech–obsessed, and culture tries to cater to this.  But where can it go from here?  Perhaps only backwards, back to face-to-face interaction, we pondered.

I think that may prove to be the case.  What do we do with our free time?  We go hiking with our friends to escape the maddening chaos of the city.  We have dinner with family, go to painting parties, and attend concerts to share in the beauty of emotion expressed through melody.  These are the things that make us feel awake and alive, not the deadening monotony of scrolling through social media and finding more reasons to be envious of other people’s lives.  The moments when someone entrusts us with their deepest fears and secrets, when we laugh and laugh without any reserve, when a stranger makes a point of holding the door for us—without these timeless human interactions, life is dull and empty.

I guess that’s why I wasn’t even disappointed today when I discovered that the hundreds of voice memos I had saved on my phone didn’t transfer over to my new phone last week.  There were dozens of songs I had started writing but never finished, encouraging words from friends, and recordings of original songs by people who live thousands of miles away now—all erased, probably forever.  Yet it doesn’t bother me as much as it should.  Sure, I’m glad we have technology so we can relive sweet moments we’ll never be able to taste again, and so that I can even share my thoughts with you right now.  But I think more important is that we are present in each moment, regardless of whether we capture it in photos or videos or voice memos or not.

Before we know it, the credits of our lives will be rolling.  We’ll look back on the decades and wonder if we really, truly lived.  When I’m 100, I hope I can say I did.