I'm Sorry Boris

The Man Sat Across From Me

"Life, " He starts as he smiles at me. "Life is an adventure." He points down the train into the emptiness and my gaze follows. "You can choose to stick by the rules and take what everyone gives you, OR take the matters into your own hands." 

I sat for a second to process what he said to me and he seemed to be waiting for me to consider it. "Okay." I say in response. I finally get a good look at his face. I can tell he's been through some stuff in his maybe eighty years of life. His eyes sparkled when transferring his knowledge to me but normally they stayed dark, empty. 

"And how do you do that?" He says which bursts me out of my bubble of thought. "I'm not sure, how?" I ask him. "Conquer that fear." he replies. What fear? I thought to myself, giving him a questioning expression in return. 

"I don't mean your fear of heights, or your fear of public speaking" He starts with a slight chuckle. "The fear of giving up. Starting over." My eyes widened and I cleared my throat. "And how do I go about doing that?" I ask him. 

"By excepting that this is your life. It's not their life. It's yours." He studies my expressions carefully after saying this and continues. "You aren't some character in a book with a scripted personality and traits that are forever glued to your name. You're a person, a valid one at that. Hell, you wanna dye your hair? Go for it. Do it. You want a whole new wardrobe because your old ones reminds yourself of bad times? Go shopping. You want a whole new friend group? Go for it, who said you couldn't change." 

I agreed with him. He was wise. But how did this apply to my situation? 

As if reading my mind he looks back down the train aisle at the emptiness. "Starting over is a good thing. Whoever told you that starting over was a sign of weakness has never overcome the fear of outliving the expectations." 

"And if you don't know how it'll work out? If it will work out?" I say quietly as I follow his finger that points down the train aisle.

 "Don't worry about it kiddo. Life is gonna throw you some real curveballs and you need to learn to be one step ahead and hit them out of the park. So far that nobody even bothers to go get them or bring them up again. So far that people will speak of how YOU overcame the curveball and hit it away rather than the curveball itself. Because if it was really that great of a curveball, you would have never hit it in the first place." 

I didn't even play baseball but the analogy made sense to me. "Hit it out of the park" I repeated to myself. "And then what?" I asked in the hopes of him having more wisdom to place upon me. 

"Never be ashamed of starting over. Starting over is a sign of growth and realizing you can self improve and make it better. Nobody ever made it perfect in this life the first try. Life is trying and trying over and over again until YOU are pleased with the results. Nobody else, but you." 

"And that's how life goes?" I say as I suddenly wish I was writing down this man's words to help keep me motivated. 

"That's how life goes." He reassures me.