A Tale of Two Resolutions

Friday Jun 23

One day about four weeks ago I told a really remarkable friend of mine about the problems that were plaguing me. I then resolved not to breathe a single word about them to anyone, including him, from then on. When you have a friend who understands everything because he feels and thinks the same way you do, do you need to say anymore to him or to anyone else? The last thing you want to do is to burden someone, or even to hope to gain the sympathy of people who don't understand.

An event today confirmed it. I resolved not to say anything, and I did just that.

Sunday Jun 25

Without a car, it took me more than twenty minutes to walk from the bookstore to my office. I wanted to get some stuff done. Too many thoughts were swirling in my mind.

I grabbed a pen and a piece of paper. I wrote down my age at the top. Below it I wrote my major in college and my graduate school discipline. I wrote down where I wanted to be and to live. Then I wrote down everything that was important to me, my interests, my friends, my everything. I wrote down just one word for each thing that crossed my mind. At the end of it, I glanced quickly at the list I just made, still confused, torn asunder in five different directions. I folded the paper up and put it in my pocket. Told myself, I will have to make a choice. Soon.

Waited at the bus-stop for over a quarter of an hour. The bus didn't come. Went back to the building to look for my friends. Couldn't find any. Sunday afternoon, nobody was there. Had the urge to call one of them up to beg for a ride home. It was then that I resolved. I resolved to walk home.

So I started making my journey home on foot. Crossed the road. Made my way past the stadium and the huge parking lot. Climbed the hill past the stately mansions and pretty homes. Left the tree-lined street for the country road. Left the shade for the sun. Walked by fields of wild grass and past the huge estate. Trudged forward on the gravel shoulder by the side of the US highway, with cars and trucks thundering by on my right. Crossed the long treeless stretch bordering the huge Walmart.

I walked and walked. Took every step in silence, silence except for the calls of the insects, the cries of the birds, the rustling of the reeds, and the incessant boom from the highway. Silence except for the voices in my head.

In the end, I got home. Just before I stepped into my apartment, I heard the hiss of a bus letting of its gases. Turning around, I spied three people get off the bus. An Indian, a blonde, and a Chinese girl. Students, students like me. The Indian chap remarked with a wide smile, "That felt so great. Must have been the best bus ride I ever took." The girls, they were giggling. A happy sight. Like me, they must have also been deceived by the bus schedule.

I did not smile. But I was thinking, I had walked for an hour and I made it home.