Michael F. DuBois

A little while back, back in October, I had left my apartment around 12:30 in the afternoon, heading down to the school to return some equipment. It was a day filled with dark skys, cold weather, and most of all, lonliness. With all of the happy things I write on this blog, all of the things I post, I want to make it clear that I do notice all of the sadness in the world as well. I do feel it too, just as we all do.  As I walked, I noticed all of the people. Everybody walked, everybody alone. Nobody talked, nobody made eye contact, there was no light or happiness or hope. The summer air was dieing, and as I passed a set of apartment buildings I noticed an old man. He had a walker holding him up and was making his way up the three steps to his front door so he could go back inside and hide from the cold chill that filled his bones. He looked so old, his skin so tired and warn, his eyes so sad, like he had lost all the hope in his life, lost all the love. I spent the rest of the ten minute walk thinking about how we all grow old. Thinking about how someday we will outlive everything that we once knew. It filled me with fear, this feeling that with every moment I grow I am getting one step further away from my childhood.

I spent nearly a half hour returning all the equipment that I had checked out the week before, and once I had finished I was once again on my way. Back to my apartment, back through the streets filled with hopeless people just waiting for the winter to come chill their bones. And as I walked, I thought about the old man again. I wondered what his life was like before today. I wondered who he was, who he loved, who he gave his heart to throughout his days here on Earth. And as I passed, a half hour later than the time I passed him last, there he was, still. He hadnt moved, hadent taken a single step towards his doorway. He was stuck. He needed his walker to move up the stairs, but his walker was too heavy for him to pull up every step. It was one of those moments where you just do something, your body just moves, like your heart takes over and moves your muscles before you can even make a decision in your head. I walked up to him, to this man I had never met, and I held out my hand. We didnt speak, I didnt tell him I was helping him, and he didnt ask. He just knew. I just knew.

He slowly grabbed my hand, and one step at a time, we moved closer to his door. We would take a step together, and then I would move his walker up. Take another step, move the walker, until finally we had made it up all three steps to his door. He slowly walked in, and when I finally asked “Are you all set, Sir?”, all he could do was turn to me and smile. Its funny, how my entire life I would have thought back to this man and been sad, thinking about his old skin, his tired eyes. But, in just one movement, just one smile, he will forever remind me of happiness.

This whole story isnt about something that I did for another person, it is not about how I helped somebody else. It was never about that. Its about what he gave to me. What he didnt know, and what he will never know, is that on that day, I had felt sadness like never before. We walk around in this world, passing by people and seeing them from the outside, never knowing what they are feeling, never knowing their stories. We think we are alone in this world, we think nobody truly knows how we feel, when the truth is, everybody is fighting their own battle. By doing what some people consider a “good deed” I was given more than I could have ever given myself. Without that man, I would not have been able to see that even in the darkest places, even in the most awful of actions, there is still hope just waiting to be pulled out by any random person who is willing to put other people before themselves.

If we all walk this earth, everyday, worrying ourselves to death over what we might lose, we may just lose the most important thing of all in this world…eachother.