Magnificence is an utterly rare quality, though one immediately recognized. It's a sort of combination of elegance, comfort, and personable charisma that can be embodied by anyone no matter how rich, beautiful, or intelligent.
Today I met a gentleman named Myron, and I doubt that I shall ever encounter him again, though in the few minutes we talked my entire being was moved - shifted.
I have been having a lousy couple days - though in truth I have been having a lousy couple years - I've never been diagnosed with depression, though my therapist says it may be a keen possibility. I am always on some spectrum from sadness to anger, with choices governed by an outlook of scarcity and the resultant fear. It's hard to enjoy anything - any feelings of "enjoyment" seem like fake projections onto a reality so cruddy that I am simply being a childish fool in denial if I claim happiness - how could one be happy in the midst of what's going on, uncertain if society will collapse and I & my (very few) loved ones shall die tomorrow?
It's all quite unpleasant, and has led to plenty of drinking, smoking, and pornography watching, the latter two of which I've stopped after a particularly miserable weekend that involved some of both. As for the drinking I have no intent to abandon it but I also have no real desire to do it right now, and at the very least I'll avoid it until the end of the week and see how I feel then.
The lot of them are distractions & numbing agents; I want to remove them and feel the pain. Because if I can really feel it, feel it all and have to live with it instead of slugging down another mental painkiller, I might finally realize that the work of changing and taking risk to really do something worthwhile in this life will be less painful that enduring the way I live now.
It's a strategy that worked once before, and enormously well. It led to what was the most challenging, though readily the most enjoyable and legitimately fulfilling year of my life. What a backslide it's been since then.
I won't belabour it longer - I'm saying all this to set you up with my mindset as my and Myron's paths crossed. I was feeling sad, quiet, not friendly, basically worthless - I wanted to avoid people. Perhaps it's the latent shame or embarrassment about myself. I kept interactions superficial.
I was working with the electric company at the time, constantly going to different substations and communications sites to maintain our private safety & monitoring network for the electric grid. I arrived at today's substation and was greeted by a few other fellows - one employee - Myron - and one outside contractor.
Immediately Myron offered a welcome, though it was not the procedural, forced greeting merely to satisfy etiquette that is all-too-common. Rather he was genuinely saying hello to someone who he saw as a friend, if for no reason beyond being a fellow man - and if you have ever experienced this yourself, you know that no further reason is needed. We're all on the same journey here.
I was obviously much younger than he, and so he asked how long I'd been with the company. "Just about a year," I said, adding, "What day is it? The twenty-ninth right?"
"Yes, the twenty-ninth."
"Well then exactly one year today."
"Congratulations on your first anniversary," he said with a smile. There wasn't a trace of Pan-Am in it - it was a quiet, but glowing, warm smile. It was a smile that said "You're part of the family." It's a sentiment to which I'm all too unaccustomed. "Now you just gotta do thirty-nine more," he joked.
Although he was only half-joking: the clear reference to his own time at the company was far from the first like it that I'd heard. This was a place for career men, and I learned my lesson two and a half years ago: I have no interest in a career, not of that type. To be locked into something, with no way to grow, that's the source of much of my pain now.
I may have no interest in that path, though I can respect people who have made that choice, as long as they have actually made it themselves and not simply fallen into it as so many poor souls do with their lives. I could tell he was one who made it.
He continued his introduction by sharing what his home base is; I didn't recognize it; I shared mine.
"Telecom?" he intuited, and I confirmed.
He moved like he had all the time in the world and not a single piece of unfinished business.
Myron returned to the subject of years worked: "I'm close to wrapping it up. Got my house, got my daughters through school, and they're having kids now." He said it all nonchalantly, even with cheer.
"How many do you have?"
"Three daughters, and my oldest has two kids, they're six and eight, they live in Huntington Beach now." I lived there too; we talked about Huntington for a bit. He didn't live there but seemed to enjoy the active lifestyle and easygoing vibe. He asked if I'm "a water guy, do [I] surf?" I was actually impressed at the level of enthusiasm one practical stranger expressed in an other's pursuit of surfing. I told him I had surfed, though not for a long time, and part of my own moving there was a not-so-subtle attempt to get myself back on the waves.
His second daughter had two children as well, and he enjoyed how much he was able to be hands-on as a grandfather. He admits that it wasn't like that as much with his children, "Dad had a lot of work to do, sometimes be outta town."
We kept talking for another couple of minutes, about everything that mattered and yet nothing of particular specialty nor significance. The big things in life really are composed in little moments, aggregated.
Eventually it was time for him to roll on. He and the contractor - an air-con & heating guy who was strictly business and probably somewhere between numb and bored, like I would be on a typical day - were checking the air conditioners at various substations, as well as killing the weeds and other such housekeeping that goes invisible to 99% of the population, and for that matter to probably 99% of the people who work here too.
He said he'd close the gate but leave the lock hanging in it, unlatched, talking about minor mechanical courtesy as nonchalantly and peacefully as he'd talked about his dear family. Then he wished be a good rest of my day, and a good rest of my future, basically I felt like I had been blessed. I offered my own for him. We said that it was nice to have met one another, and both of us meant it. Then Myron proceeded to leave.
I walked out to my vehicle to fetch some tools, and he was in the process of reversing his truck to exit. On any other day I would have gotten my tools and simply walked from my van back into the building without so much as a glance; I would consider the interaction ended despite the obviously still-extant physical presence. I knew that he'd be looking to give one last goodbye, and if I wasn't looking back to return it he'd be disappointed, and as a result I'd be disappointed too. And as soon as I would return to the room I would wonder, "What the fuck is wrong with you, man? Why couldn't you have just turned your head and smiled, it's so goddamn easy to do!"
And so I did turn to look, and sure enough he was looking back, smile still beaming. He waved, on the other side of his truck's window, and I smiled and waved back. He shifted into a forward gear and drove away.
And like that I was in a good mood. I mean a genuinely, not "I'm trying this but it feels fake and like I'm in abject denial" good mood. Things were easy and there was a lightness to the world. I actually...I actually could see a future, something I don't often...hardly ever, in fact.
I was possessed of the sense that what I would do for the next couple hours was a valid and useful stepping stone to somewhere good. Maybe not a direct and obvious one, but it was motion as opposed to motionlessness, and it was in a productive direction. All I had to do now was make tomorrow either bigger than today, or pointed in a better direction, or with a little ingenuity maybe both.
Thanks Myron.
May 29, 2019
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