I see it in their faces. Here at the Homeless facility. The way the young mother looks at her baby in the stroller, “What’s going to become of us now?”
The old woman asleep, head down on the metal bench, “So many places I’ve slept, maybe this, my last, there’s no more ‘going’ in me.”
The rude boys running past, trying to look cool in clothes from ‘donations,’ all of them thinking, “I’m going to be bigger than this someday!”
The men in the Alcohol and Drug Treatment Program hiding in back and around the corner, talking on banned cell phones. They’re talking to wives and girlfriends, promising the World, acting tough, and being scared.
All these faces, waiting for something better to come along, thinking of where they have been and where they are going.
And I’m invisible, just a custodian picking up trash, moving in and out of offices, dorm rooms, waiting rooms, courtyards, kitchens, restrooms, and people’s lives, unnoticed.
But I’m thinking of my own life, where I have been. Sometimes I can slip into non-duality, where I AM nowhere, but I always come back to remember.
I remember being where they are. I remember guards making me take my clothes off and put on other clothes that said, “Property of County Jail.”
I remember letters to my girlfriend promising the world. I remember waiting, waiting to use phones, waiting in lobbies, waiting for probation officers, social workers, principals, doctors, results, rides, answers, and my drunk father to get up. I remember waiting.
I’m not there now, but I put myself in their shoes and think, “They are all trying to get where I am now.”
In distance, it’s only a few feet. In time, it might be a matter of seconds or infinite lifetimes. I’m just a custodian moving through people’s lives, unnoticed. But I’m the man I’ve always wanted to be.
I did not gain anything that I didn’t already have. No miracles happened. Yet, when I look around, I am so content with all that I have.
And there is no more waiting for me.
