on my way home

This is a story with a lesson; a moral; a taut bow-tied ending.
It isn’t a mystery nor is it in any way an action suspenseful thriller.
It’s really just a short story with an extemporaneous ending, since that seems to have been the word of the day.

Today I did what most typical New Yorkers do when they have a short but substantial snap shot of free time amidst the warm and fuzzy holiday season. I went shopping. Armed with a credit card, a pair of good old fashioned walking shoes and two equally eager to consume shopping mates, we trotted carelessly from one fantastically overpriced venue to another, sorting through highly solicited sales racks and piles of disarrayed merchandise left over from the past weekend of holiday frenzy. New purchases. Good company. A pleasant day all in all. And yet, even while coasting within the aura of benign post holiday bargain spirit, there still existed a palpable plethora of snippy complaints and irksome retorts amidst a sea of harried employees and impatient customers. Whether our feet ached or our bellies rumbled,we blatantly announced our present discomfort as we waited on the daunting register lines, checked and rechecked our precious cell phones and scowled at the mass of humanity uncomfortably pressed between ourselves and the distantly fading store entrance. And after one too many experiences of this claustrophobic and tiresome nature, we rewarded ourselves with what typical New Yorkers would agree were perfectly reasonable rewards for our tedious struggles. We each collectively purchased a steaming Chai tea latte at the glorious establishment we commonly call Starbucks, not so surprisingly filled to the brim with other consumers celebrating the acquisition of their respective new purchases as well.

And there you have it.
Typical day in the life of a blissfully bumbling New Yorker.

As I wedged both my weary body and bustling shopping bags onto the cushion-covered seat of the express bus for our journey back home, I commented to my friend about the gnawing pang of guilt-ridden and lackadaisical remorse already bubbling its way through my stale limbs and numb mind. Hours after we had begun our credit card splurging venture in Manhattan, I was left feeling like a fraud having willfully exchanged my fleeting days of freedom with the capitalistic cash registers of countless commercial enterprises. Akin to my now depleted wallet, I too felt just as empty.

And at that very moment, I understood why.

Abruptly jolted from my solitary bubble, I immediately sensed the halted momentum of our bus, the stillness of the motor and the muffled buzz of the surrounding passenger’s voices. Peering through the slight gap adjoining the bus’s cushioned seats, my sterile gaze was met with an unwanted spectacle of piercing and flashing red lights casting a shadow on the plexi-glass windows belonging to the motionless stampede of cars outstretched in a double lane before us. Without uttering or hearing a word concerning our whereabouts, it was all too clear that we were painfully close to what appeared to be a horrific and possibly fatal accident. My inactive mind suddenly kicked into high gear wondering about the details of the accident and worse yet, how many victims might have been injured in the wreck. Sure enough, as our silent bus crept eerily closer to the scene of the accident, we contorted and craned our necks in order to get a better viewing of a battered vehicle exposing the remnants of a crumpled hood, shattered windows and a wildly distorted frame. Although an ambulance appeared adjacent to the wreck, our bus once again regained speed making it impossible to skew the area for survivors or victims near or within the truck. Our grizzly vision was too quickly replaced with the familiar sight of neighboring apartment complexes, dimly lit streetlamps and pedestrian dotted roads as the bus whisked itself onward to our sought-after destinations.

There isn’t much subtlety in the lesson I learned that evening. How petty our daily worries and woes appear in the face of such tragedy. An hour after I first boarded the bus, I staggered off at my stop, shopping bags in hand, trying to fight the grimacing memory of the list of my prior complaints uttered sporadically throughout the day.

I had traded in my cloud of apathy for a renewed sense of self and a deep appreciation for the moments in life that really matter: the ones in which you are fortunate enough to be alive.