You Don't Learn This In School

Times are rough, and 2016 is coming to a close with love packing its bags and peacing out, knowing that nothing can save humans from themselves.

But there's also knowing that the true damage has not yet been done.

Still, I go about my day, spirits high despite everything. Nothing too exciting, just getting glimpses of others, wondering what life must be like for them. What do they think of as they lay in bed at night, the ones who seem like they have no one?

Last Friday night in CVS an old frail Italian man tripped over his cane and fell over right as I turned into an aisle looking for lip balm. I heard a ruckus as a few people called for help. Looking around the corner, I saw a huge standing banner that had been upright wafting down over his small frame as he grasped at it frantically for support, and then disappeared beneath it.

The homeless Asian lady with grey hair and rubber slippers still sits by herself in a section of the Prudential Center. She smiles to herself, her trash bags filled with belongings at her ashen feet. I've seen her in the exact state for the nine and a half years I've walked through Back Bay.

I sit in Barnes & Noble eating a pretzel in their cafe area while observing an Indian lady talking animatedly to a bookshelf a few feet from me. She wags her finger at the shelf, and then smiles flirtatiously and touches her face shyly. When she glances around to see if anybody is watching her intimate dalliance with a bookshelf, I pretend to be absorbed in my pretzel.

Who knows what life has in store for us? Where will home be? Who will be the one to stay with us through it all?