Twilight Hindsight

I share love and respect because it feels good to do so. Nowadays we Seattleites are not expecting such things. People walk past me, past everyone, with eyes averted, earbuds plugged in. They assume they are hated and judged, and thusly I become invisible. They notice only what they expect. Just the other night I'd started saying, “hello–” when the guy boarding screamed so loudly everyone instantly looked up: “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

Tonight I explained to a passenger, "They think I'm mad at them, and I haven't even done anything!"
She burst out laughing. "Honey, if they think you're mad… it's them tha's got somethin’ wrong with them! I been riding your bus for how long now? It should be obvious to any, to any sane human, that you're respectful, tha' you tryna be nice!"

And yet, if you're as convinced of the world being against you as some of these folks are, you won't see anything else, obvious or otherwise.

I feel like an anomaly these days. Life in the developed world post-2020 is all about escape– from reality, obligation, introspection and most of all, other people. In this manner some find an overlap between fentanyl and smartphone addiction, as both seek to reduce sensory experience, to remove us from reality. I enjoy phones as a tool but I aim in the opposite direction, seeking refuge in the present, in direct contact with others. 

I still say hello because maybe, just maybe, it’ll reach them. Shutting the world out is easier, yes, but we forget after a while how good it feels to connect with others. The sensation of belonging. I want to offer that, keep it alive. 

Here is a woman with more than twenty Safeway grocery bags laid out on the bus stop sidewalk. I step off the bus and help carry the bags aboard not because I like her (I don’t), not because it was smart to buy that many groceries and have no way to carry them (it wasn’t), but because she's human.

And because it's what the best version of myself would do. You know this feeling. As I duck in and out the front doors with bags in hand, an elderly Somalian woman tells me, “You’re a good driver.” She had never spoken to me before. Yes, part of me melted inside.

Later, while the grocery-laden woman was cursing someone out and as I helped her with her last bags stepping out, I found myself chatting with a regular on the sidewalk. He leaned on his cane.
"You know, the last two buses passed her up."
I looked at the massive quantity of ice cream she'd spilled on the bus floor. Fentanyl annihilates blood sugar levels, which is why you see people huffing down stolen Tillamook and Ben & Jerry's on street corners everywhere now.
"Well, I don’t blame ‘em," I said. We do need operators who'll pass this sort of thing up, or else no fare-paying passenger would ever get anywhere. But my issue is that I'm Nathan.

"My problem is, I’m too nice, man! I can’t help myself!"
"Hey, nothin’ wrong with that!"
A couple of strangers standing around in the comfortable twilight. I talk to older folks more regularly now. They get it. There will always be those of us who like to gab it up. I leaned against the zone flag and said, "My question is, how the heck is she gonna get all this stuff home?"
He chuckled. "I know, right?"
"You gotta think about stuff like that when you’re at the store!"

We vary in our capacity for abstract thought. Some of us think ahead, and some of us don't. In more than one way, she didn't, but at the end of the day those details fall away like so much chaff. Years from now I will not remember her particulars. There will simply be the memory that I helped someone that day, stretching my legs and talking to the person next to me, trying to be my best self. 

The memory will contain the fact that it felt good to do so.