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Thinking about self-actualization during a time of personal turmoil. |
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The hotel manager was a 30ish black man with a round face, gold wire-rimmed glasses, cheerful and friendly, but living in a town where black people are as rare as four-leaf clovers. I wondered if he ever went home since he seemed to be there at least 12 hours each day. He made no hesitation when recommending a place for dinner when I asked. Just a few miles down the road, located in the dining room of a 200 year-old hotel, it was just superb. When I returned two hours later, my palate satiated, he asked if I followed his recommendation. When I confirmed his culinary good taste, he stood tall and leaned back with his thumbs in his pockets, grinning broadly. I described my dinner and told him it was so good I had eaten more than at any meal in the past several months. To which he replied, "Good for you," and laughed, then wished me a pleasant evening. *** The dinner waitress, a 30ish white woman, perfectly poised and polished in this role. To engage her in chitchat would be impossible, since it would violate her vision of that role. This was, after all, the most elegant place in town, and a respectful distance must be maintained. I would learn nothing about her in our two hours of intermittent interactions as she served me. *** The 20-something white man came up to my rent car as I was refilling it with gas in the middle of the day, at a busy intersection on my way to the airport, and he began speaking to me. Surprised, I turned to look and saw his wild eyes as he began gesturing rapidly and pleading with me to give him a ride to where he could "get his medicine", somewhere near the airport. When I told him maybe, another man came out of the store and stood by the car, ready to get in the back seat. I turned to look at him and said, "Who are you?" "Oh, I'm with him," he said. I raised my hands, palms out, and said, "Deal's off guys. No rides." About this time, the store attendant, a burly white man came out and stood nearby watching, ready to lend assistance if needed. As the wild-eyed man kept pleading, he finally said, "Leave the lady alone and get out of here." The two men looked at one another and walked away, the first one still very animated and still talking. The attendant went back inside, then said over the speaker at the pumps, "Sorry about that ma'am." I went inside to get a receipt and to thank the man for coming to my aid. It turned out the first man was asking him where the methadone clinic was before he came out to my car. I thanked him again for the help, and he said he was glad to do it. And he was calling the cops if the guy came back. *** A skycap rolled her slowly by in a wheelchair as I sat in the terminal waiting on the plane to arrive. She was elderly, white, and had that aristocratic look about her. Her white hair was perfectly coiffed, teased and sprayed, and her clothes were definitely not from Wal Mart. Her calm countenance as she sat watching the rain out the window suggested that she was used to being taken care of, and she had no concern that anyone here would let her down. She waited patiently until they came to preboard her, one to push the wheelchair, one to hold the umbrella for her. The flight attendant confirmed that she was connecting in Atlanta to continue on to West Palm Beach, Florida, and that there would be an attendant waiting at the gate to help her. *** The flight attendant on the first leg of my flight home was a 40ish white woman. She never stopped moving - checking with each of her passengers several times on the 90 minute flight to make sure we each had everything we wanted or needed. And she was doing it all by herself on this Canadair regional jet. I've never felt so cared for on a flight before, and I've flown many places. One of the passengers told her how great a job she had done as we were deplaning, and she just smiled. I agreed. *** The counter girl at Wendy's in the Atlanta airport was under twenty, black, and with eyes that telegraphed her raw emotions - anger, resentment, and despair. As she waited on customers, she couldn't hide those feelings, and each customer was relieved to get their food and get away as quickly as possible from such a profoundly unhappy person. *** The 40ish white man in the seat next to me on my last flight had oiled hair, creased in the front as it was swept forward, then back. His eyes were squinty in his slightly puffy face. His body motions were exaggerated, like his machismo was just bursting to find something to do with itself. Yet he was friendly, telling me he had been a cop for 12 years, then an airline screener, then quit that boring job to go into private security. I thought for awhile that maybe he was one of those air marshals, sitting in the last row there with me, but he bought a Coors Light, and I couldn't see where he could hide a gun. He was definitely restless though, and he seemed to be searching for something, perhaps fulfillment, a thing which might forever elude him. *** I didn't see the uniforms since my seat was in the very back of the plane. But just before we were to land, I saw some fellow passengers talking with a young man with almost no hair, just a few rows up. I heard someone say "two weeks", which caused me to look up and see the desert camouflage of his shirt. When we landed, the flight attendant picked up her mike and announced that we had two soldiers on board, with two weeks leave from Iraq, and would we other passengers mind letting them off first, to honor them for their service to our country. We all applauded of course. One was a white man, one a black woman, both around twenty years old. They both looked slightly lost and uncertain. But when we got to the gate, they stood up and walked off with heads held high. I passed the young man once more on the way to the baggage claim, now reunited with his young wife and baby. One of the security screeners yelled across the way as they passed, "You two have two weeks, so you take good care of each other." ****** I shouldn't have read the F. Scott Fitzgerald stories on the plane going out. He paints with his eloquent words, producing portraits of people whose lives are irrevocably altered by fate, which we all know is sometimes cruel and sometimes kind. Those characters run the gamut from the arrogant, callous young and wealthy elite to the street-roaming alcoholic, whose only thought is where that next bottle is coming from. The images were so vivid, my subconscious began finding and sorting the people I encountered in my travels, the ones who stood out as unique faces in the crowd. I couldn't stop myself from guessing at their past and future, based simply on seeing their present. All those characters - where were they headed, and why? My best guesses: The hotel manager was clearly headed up. He had everything going his way, and any employer would be delighted to have him. The same for the flight attendant. Working a less glamorous regional flight for now, but not for long. Someone will notice and she'll get the plum route she deserves. The elderly woman from West Palm Beach is near the end of that good life that we all want, content now with memories of the past and visits to loved ones. The dinner waitress will probably be doing her job for a long time, since she is good at it and seems content. The security man will change jobs from time to time, making a living, but will always be somewhat restless. The soldiers are in that place many young people go to postpone their future or overcome their past - relatively safe and insulated from the real world. Who knows what their future holds? And then there are the counter girl and the methadone man. Their futures don't look so bright right now. It is those last two that puzzle me the most. What went wrong to cause them to get on the down escalator of life? Can they get off before it's too late? What would it take to turn them around? I mentioned age, gender and race in each case to make the point that although those things can be a temporary advantage or disadvantage, they didn't seem to be a barrier to those two whose future seemed brightest. Those two exuded self-confidence and were fully engaged in their work and in the people around them. They were enjoying life. That energy and positive outlook is infectious. I want to be around people like that. What did they have that the counter girl and the methadone man lacked? Was it in their nature or their nurture? Could those latter two ever overcome it? Self-esteem is such a tenuous thing, sometimes tarnished, and sometimes gilded by the vagaries of fate. Yet some people seem to bounce back and rebuild themselves after the most severe storm passes through their lives, and others struggle their entire lives to build anything at all. I don't know why. What I do know is that my rebuilding is coming along nicely. I am determined to stay on the up escalator for a long time.
10/5/03 |
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Last Update 4/3/04 |