The Violin & The Water Glasses

The. Best. Thing. I've. Seen. Riding. Public Transit.

Or at least close to it . . .

I wish I had a video to show you of the great sight, but sadly, I don't. Looks like you're going to have to use your imagination!

Picture, if you will, a gray building with rooftop access right next to the elevated train tracks. Standing side-by-side on the rooftop are two men, right at the ledge. The man on the left is playing a violin. The man on the right is holding a serving tray with two wine glasses of [what I'm assuming is] water, OVER the edge of the building.

As the train curves around the building, the violinist plays on. The water man's arm shakes with fatigue (I don't really know if his arm was tired, but it sounds good!) My head turns as the train passes by, eager to see what is happening. As the building quickly disappears from view and I'm straining my neck and eyes to their fullest extent, I see only ONE other person on the train who has spotted the odd situation outside.

I'll never know exactly what was going on, but my suspicion is a science experiment! I predict they were seeing if the violin could play the right note at the right frequency to shatter the wine glasses. I also predict the glasses had different levels of water. I discussed this great sight with a friend later and she had different ideas as to what the two men were doing - but now I forget what they were . . .

So how was your imagination? Could you picture it? If not, my quick drawing below will bring it home for you.

NOTE: This is an EXACT likeness.
Couldn't get closer to the real thing unless you were there!

Actions Speak Loud With Some Words

When trying to live my life by practicing what I preach, in terms of everyone matters and all people have value, I've found things harder than before. Really, the struggle now seems to be NOT acknowledging people around me.

Like most people - scratch that - like ALL people, I have initial impressions about those I see around me. I won't lie, the other day when there was a mentally handicapped man on the train stopping and talking to various people, I didn't want him to talk to me. To reduce the chances of this, I knew I needed to NOT acknowledge him - which was really hard! I think I couldn't fully ignore everything except my own existence in the world and looked in his direction.

He started talking to me.

I had two options: be a humongous jerk and completely ignore him or politely acknowledge him with limited responses. I chose the latter. But even as I started in with my tight smile and short answers, I found myself quickly becoming much less defensive about interacting with him.

Why?

Because I had eyes, to start with. I could see how everyone else looked at him, averted their gaze when he approached or completely ignored him. And this observation made me really sad. I'm no angel. I'm guilty of doing all of these things on a probably more frequent basis than I even realize. However, my attitude-changing thought on the train was: What if this was me? How incredibly lonely and degrading and dehumanizing would it be to essentially be excluded from interactions of everyday society because you are different and can't help it? It would be a completely different story if he was a drunk on the train and terrorizing people. But he wasn't. He was [probably] a mid-30s, bearded man, complimenting people on their shirts.

That was the first reason I quickly changed my stance on talking to him. The second reason was gratitude - You could tell that he was genuinely happy about talking with another person. If I wasn't completely sure of this, the smile and twinkle in his eyes definitely gave it away.

What did we talk about?

Actually, it was still just me giving short acknowledging responses to the statements [I could understand] about his train destination plans for the afternoon. But through this he was able to share and (sort of?) make connections with others [i.e. me] around him.

Taking time to adjust my instinctive impression and being open to talking with this man on the train may not seem like a big deal. And it may not have meant anything to the man at all. But regardless of the meaning on the receiving end, I know I can feel good about upholding my own standards and giving everyone a chance of at least a small bit of human dignity.

Again, It might not seem like much, but just imagine if everyone was willing to make such small efforts! That's the world I want to live in and I'm trying my best to lead by example. Will you join me?