Author: kellyjoseph

One Friday evening, early last semester, I threw a case of beer from my fridge into my backpack and walked to the nearby bus stop.  I had already had a few rum and cokes and was on my way to campus to meet some friends for the night.  When I arrived at the bus stop I found a portly homeless man sitting on the bench, wrapped in a warm coat.

I greeted him and sat down.  He was lubed up as well and so started talking.  He spoke well and was probably one of the more educated bums around Austin.  He didn’t ask for money off the bat, but soon the topic came up.

“Say man, what do you think about giving money to homeless people?  Bums, you know?”  He went for it.

“I don’t really give them any money.  I don’t bug them though, just as long as they leave me alone.”

“Ah right, right… sure is taking a while for the bus to come.”

The conversation went somewhere else from there and I started getting thirsty.  I am no way mean enough to drink a beer in front of a bum, so I reached into my bag and grabbed two.  The man smiled and was happy to have a Budweiser in his hand.

Bums have a pretty objective view on things, seeing as how they don’t do shit or anything, and so we started getting pretty deep.  The man was a homeless philosopher in his own right, and even schooled me on a few new ideas.  He was enjoying the conversation so much that at one time he broke and asked:

“Say man, do you wanna roll a joint?”

“Sure, I’d love to, but I’ve got none.”

“Well here, roll with this.”  And the man reached into his coat pocket and brought out a small bag of pot as well as a paper for rolling.  This story then became that time that I smoked a joint with a homeless person.

****

It was soon after that when he asked me:

“Say man, do you have a house?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you look so sad?”

At first I thought the question wasn’t valid, as surely I didn’t look sad.  But I had the right drugs in my system to take such a question, proposed by such a mangled man, very seriously.  I got reflective and knew right away that I was still wanting every day, that I would look negatively on everything I had and only want more and better, more and better.

*****

I have told that story to only a few people.  In most cases it was for humor – “so there I was, and this homeless guy busts out some bud and a roll paper,” but the last time I told it was during a conversation about thinking positively, for recognizing what we have and not getting down for what we don’t have.  The person to whom I told the story then told it to another friend who needed to hear it.  From this connection we can draw another moral, about the hobo.

That even when we seem to have nothing, we can still give something.  The bum at the bus stop has helped out non-bums, only by questioning their sadness.  When we spiral down the void where we see that everything we want in life is not yet in front of us, we can still make the choice to add some value to the system.  Giving out those positive signs, the smiles and the stories that can circle around and brighten people’s day.

Happy people make a difference, I know it because they make my days so much easier.

+++

I went for a jog today. I didn’t bring music, just focused on the tempo of my thoughts and the self-empowerment that comes from shrinking your life down to the things in front of your field of vision. Starting down into the canyon brought this effect into light. Jogging, you have the idea of your goal in mind – the end of the road, but there is a shaky middle ground in between. Instead of worrying about how I will reach that end, I take the natural course. My gaze focuses ahead and downward, watching the ground immediately in front of me for obstacles that might disrupt my footing. Then, the developed trust between my legs and what my eyes see takes over and I move ever forward, one pumping step at a time.

It became less of a conscious process after a short while. The canyon trail leveled out, and became flat and devoid of rocks. My gaze could lift from the earth and soak in the world around me. I could take note of the dark, earthy landscape straight out of a desert, the palm trees taller than most houses, and the beautiful buildings of higher learning that crest the hill to my left. The landscape here is not to be called majestic, I was born in Alaska, but it does have a large calming effect. People with ADD should be prescribed the view here, it is so chill.

It is this natural process that has wound me down in the past weeks. For most of my life that I lived in the United States I would operate with the end in mind. I had a standard of success drilled into me by my parents, by school, by television and by pretty much everyone else. It is this path to success that leads one to school, a job, a house, a family, and on down the road to an insignificant, unfulfilled death. I was so focused on that end, of how much money I was going to have in thirty years, that I wasn’t even taking the proper steps to get there. That goal became me and defined how I operated. I wasn’t me.

I’ve let go of that goal. How can I be history’s greatest man, if I’m not the greatest man right now? Once I asked that question, my focus changed. My gaze drew towards the small things in front of me, I could more easily look at every choice I could make, and the ones that clicked, the ones that I felt like placing my feet upon, they have been the most self-gratifying. They are the ones that bring me closer and closer to my self-defined goal. They are the ones that set me free, that let me trust myself and let my gaze wander to the beautiful things around me. I have never been as happy as I am right now. Even though I am technically homeless, sleeping on friend’s couches and working in the merchant marines, I have never been more self-satisfied.

Jogging through life like this is hard. It can wear you out, it can leave you out of breath and hating it. But then runner’s leg can take over, and you become the fastest person in the world. We always feel better after a jog, we are always happy with that choice – to hit the ground running.