A Promise of Hope

Chapter 2

The moment my body crossed the threshold between my old life and my new life, I could feel the wet wind whip at my face. I welcomed it. I stepped onto the dirt. The New York dirt. I had been dreading this day. I had been dreading this hour. I had been dreading this minute, this moment. But now that I was here, now that I was here with old, wooden station directly in front of me, I felt somewhat fearless. The electrical poles were tall and their reach was equally impressive. All around I spied about twenty men in total (plus those getting off the train of course). The thick smoke of the engine billowed into the sky, putting the previously before impressive reaches of the electrical poles to shame. I just stood there for a moment, watching the smoke fly effortlessly into the misty sky. It didn't disperse as much as I thought it would. It simply stayed together, the cylindrical plume of smoke keeping a relatively constant diameter as its height increased for what looked like forever.

I snapped out of my gaze when I man bumped into me. He cast me a nasty smile, the streaks of dirt on his face simply adding to my discomfort. My mother had once told me that it seems like there are many different types of people in this world. There are people that will do things for themselves and there are people who will do things for others, but these judgments are only what we observe. Who are we to assume we know a person based on a couple moments of interaction. Who are we to try to generalize or tag or archive or sort or group anyone into anything, especially when we don't actually know anything about their life outside of their appearance for a couple moments. Imagine you are having a bad hair day, and you roll out of bed with your hair all messy. You decide not to do your hair, due to not sleeping well and feeling like a humanoid representation of the Grim Reaper and death itself. If you met someone who you didn't want to get the wrong impression of you, you may be fearful and weary of your God-awful hair.

Why do we get weary? It is because the society that we live in today is a society of judgment and first impressions. It is a society in which we are not truly free to express ourselves because of the fear of social ridicule. 

However, despite my impulse and my discomfort, I flashed what I could only hope was a convincing smile at him. The way I see it, if everyone in this world did everything they could in their power to be the best person that they could be, the world would be a far superior place than what it is today. They say that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Well, the reform of our world definitely seems like a thousand mile journey, so I guess I will be the first step.

As the poor man takes in my cheerful but slightly awkward smile, he smiled and looked down at the ground when I heard someone shouting and the all of a sudden I was on the ground with the great sound of a train speeding to a halt about five meters away from my head. My body was perpendicular to the tracks and there was a man on top of me, gazing into my eyes. His green eyes were accented by the faint hazel inner circle. He looked concerned and genuinely scared for me. That's sweet. He stood up and offered me a hand. I took it and stood up, it was not very graceful, but regardless, I was just surprised that my legs were still working after what I just then realized that this striking stranger had just saved my butt from this train. 

I started looking at this stranger with wild curiosity. If I am being honest, a tad bit of lust was there as well. His eyes sparkled like the marble cast into a moonlit pond. His jet black hair was shinning from the dew of the morning. I took his hand and he pulled me up with ease. Surprising,  I wasn't the lightest girl around. It then realized that I was taking in this person fairly quickly. I was making calculations about wheater to trust him or not. It occurred to me that I shouldn't be so trusting so a stranger who I had just met in this world. But this was a brave new world,  and I was determined to be stronger than I was before. I gazed into this strangers eyes; I was enamored by the world that I saw there. It was if there were hundreds of thousands of ideas and concepts and ideas that danced around them, influencing and shaping the world that he saw. I should probably stop addressing this person as 'stranger'. 
I asked, "What is your name?"

"Jake, and what is the name of the lovely lady to which is indebted to me?"

Jake. "Alice."