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Stretched upright he had to be six foot three, but as he walked, shoulders bent under some invisible burden, hunched slightly at the waist, he probably showed only about six feet. His craggy face was marked with pronounced, deep-set lines; a face weathered by life, leathered by the North Dakota oil fields.
Black hair specked in gray, messy, unkempt, cut above the ears, a matching mustache. He wore an old, blue ski jacket that hung just past his hips on his lean frame, the collar jacked up around his neck.
He walked by steadily, but with a phony purpose, paying no attention to me, but with no real place to go. As set as his jaw was, his coffee colored eyes were jittery as a caffeine freak.
It was in a hallway of a dingy hotel in Rugby, North Dakota that I saw him. I saw him once and never again...
Who is he? What is his story?
What weight has he borne that causes his shoulders to bend? What rains have his years withstood that wore the canyons in his face? Why did he appear resolute at first blush, but on closer inspection insecure and unsure?
I have no idea...
Every person has a story. It's good to keep that in mind when you're dealing with them.
Knowledge of a life leads to understanding, understanding to empathy, empathy to compassion, compassion to cooperation.
I do a lot of reading. I read a ton of history, lots of biographies, psychology, human behaviors and trends...the more you know about people the more you'll understand how to lead them.
I've come to enjoy memoirs above all. Why? Because every person has a story...and every story is compelling...if it's told well. Memoirs open up other people's worlds to me.
In recent years, I've wandered through fascinating lives in wonderful books like, Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres, Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nasisi, The Heart and the Fist by Eric Greitings, Unlikely Brothers by John Prendergast and Michael Mattocks, A Hundred and One Days by Asne Seierstad, Desertion by Jack Todd, and Picking Cotton by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton.
Fabulous all.
These are not famous people who did momentous things that captured the attention of an adoring public. These are you and me...lives lived. Quiet momentousness, if I may.
Every person has a story, and if we don't judge by assumption, but take the time to ask, to discover, to inquire, we might be amazed.
And that knowledge might lead to understanding, that understanding to empathy, that empathy to compassion, and that compassion to cooperation.
As for the man in the blue jacket? I don't know what his story is...but I'd be interested to hear it...especially if it's told well.
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