In between friends who call me up because they are too scared to walk home alone from office on a scary street and friends who call me on a weekend while ticking names off the list of people not in touch since a while, life goes on. People can never stop surprising me. They can make me feel like I am the best and the worst within minutes of each other! Strangers go out of their way to let me know that something I wrote did manage to strike a chord with them, and here I was with someone who thinks that I have an innate ability to cut people off. Maybe that is a compliment too, I am not sure.
I watched a documentary called ‘Life, Animated’ about an Autistic man called Owen who tries to make sense of the world through Disney movies. He appeared to have a plan to understand people and communicate well. He has memorized every single line from all of the animated Disney movies ever made and has a sort of Disney club where they watch clips from the movies and discuss what it is trying to teach them. For him, everything he saw had to fit into a Disney script. He experienced various emotions watching the right scenes. We could argue that real life is not that simple, but he seemed to have found an easy and reasonable way to deal with the nuances of life. How I wish it was that uncomplicated for the rest of us too!
The sidekicks in the movies draw his attention and he makes a story with those characters because he “did not feel like a hero” at that time in life. That resonates with all of us more often than not. I was far from being the hero of my life when my manager at the on-campus job hinted that frankly, he does not have any work for me and had to get rid of me. Being the kindhearted soul that he is, he tried to put it across as subtly as he could and also said I could stick around till the summer term ended. I seemed to have forgotten the fact that it was my plan to leave the job and concentrate on getting a real job in my last semester. I was despairing in vain and contacted some friends who could possibly land me a job soon. Even though what was happening was exactly what I wanted, my pride was hurt. I wanted to be the one calling the shots and did not want anybody to do it for me. Letting go of those thoughts could make me happier if not a hero! Moreover, I have found a lot of people around me who I could look up to.
There is a lady at work who has a wide smile on her face no matter what. After interacting with her a few times, I came to know that she takes care of children with severe cerebral palsy. Her gleaming eyes, while talking about the children and their parents who are grateful to her, fail to hide her pride in doing something that really matters. Little does she know that she is a hero in my eyes and every single time she talks to me, she fills me with enthusiasm to be slightly more sincere and persevere each day. A single mother of a daughter who recently graduated and started working, who I had to annoy a great deal during the course of a day, but takes some time at the end of the day to tell me I did a good job hanging in there and points out what I did best, could quite be the hero (for I cannot find a better word) in her daughter’s life as well as mine. Then there are others who stay a few minutes after clocking out of work for the day, only to be of assistance to someone who needs them. When I leave here, I would have mastered the skills to be of some help to others and who knows, I might feel like a true hero someday.