Gone Bowling
Something “stuck” with me today, I’m not sure what to call it, I noticed just a few feet down from me, a co-worker of mine (id never actually spent more than a couple seconds talking with him before), as we worked he seemed …. Preoccupied, with what I couldn’t have told you yesterday, and the day before that I really didn’t care (or hadn’t cared enough to notice).
Today, I noticed …. I “cared” enough to ask how he was. Hahaha such a simple question that so many of us overlook on an ongoing basis. That simplest of things seem to flutter by us in our everyday lives. Just like the air that we breathe, we take it for granted that everyone around us is doing “All Right”.
But today was different, I asked him if he was ok, I think my exact words were, “hey Mat …. How you doin”, for some reason he almost burst into tears. I think that the emotional deluge that had been building was just waiting for the right “stone” to be “thrown” against the “wall” that he had been building.
He broke down, there and then, without warning and I was ….. Left …. To comfort him. Now I’m not sure that if I were God I would have chosen me to be the one to give solace to an obviously disturbed person, but there I was listening to all the grievances that he had in his life, about taxes, car payments …. How he thought that his wife might be cheating on him because she went out every Thursday night to her “Bowling League” and didn’t want him to come along (it was her “Me Time”)
And then it hit me ……. That’s why I was there, you see His Wife Mellanie, played on a league called the Vipers, and it just so happens that I play on (an opposing league to her) called the Titans, and every Thursday night we meet, not as passionate lovers as some might think but as opponents in this grand thing called Bowling.
So never take for granted that the one that you see every day sitting next to you at work is doing “OK” they just might need you, even if you have never talked to them before … you just might be the person that can answer all their questions, and lay their worries to rest.
Again, this has been another edition of Ryland’s Raves …. Thanks for reading