sells me my T.O.papers every Saturday morning at the corner convenience store. He happily tells me he is going back to India for two months and wonders how life will have changed there with the auto giants and changes to the economy. He has been gone for seven years and wondering about all “the changed faces”. Looking like an Indian Rowan Atkinson, he smilingly says he hopes they don’t find his mug too “homely”.
I like Ketan. He is a real person, naturally friendly, and he assumes I’m ok, too. We both respectfully call each other “sir’. My weekly connection with Ketan is light, open, and mutually curious. We joke with each other easily though we are worlds of experience apart. He will be gone next weekend and so I wish him well. I am more connected and more easily connected to Ketan than thousands of others I have met or known in my life. I would trust him more than many other people I once knew and many I once wanted to be close/r to.
The Ketans of my life pop up everywhere in my life, sometimes in faraway places. It’s a curious thing. Real people, nice people, just spot each other in the busy course of their days. They begin to talk and a positive bond immeditaely springs up as if they have known each other all their lives. I sometimes remark that life can be easy and very pleasant sometimes, and that there are many good, nice people out there. They show up all on their own in the flow. Or often it is a humorous, empathic comment that creates the unexpected positive connection for both parties.
One of the best aspects of having been a teacher, a musician, a writer, a poet, and a thinker, is that these moments happen magically, spontaneously, osmotically (for me anyway). And all that has happened is that I am who I am, and without consciously projecting an iota, the contact occurs. People do find one, and as I have said, the real people, the nice people, the good folks–find one another.
Mutual live in-person presence, not the least bit e-mediated or clouded by limited/limiting egoic attitudes.