Melancholy

Today I took a ride to school with my mom. On our way to drop my younger sister off to school, we stopped at a traffic light which seemed to take forever to change. While we waited there, a man came out of a shop which was right on the corner where the traffic light was. He was shabbily dressed and his clothes bore several stains in various places. His body was smaller than you would think it should be. In his gnarled hands he held a small bread in a clear plastic bag, often called a ‘dollar bread’ in reference to its cost. He stood on the pavement right outside the shop and began to eat the bread, right there and then, straight out of the bag.

All that I’ve mentioned so far is nothing really special. We see people like this everyday. I see people like this everyday, and usually I remember them for a short time and then forget them. Sometimes I feel sorry for them, and then sometimes I wonder if they are happier than us. But this man wasn’t. As he put the bread into his mouth and began to chew, I saw sadness in his eyes. Not the sadness that accompanies watching a sad movie or listening to a story. His eyes were filled with deep wounding sorrow, the kind that crushes the soul of a man.

And for a second the world around me stopped. All that I could see was the tortured melancholy look that this man’s eyes bore. A deep, serious emotion that affect the way he looked. I wondered what could have colored his eyes with such a depressing hue. Was it poverty? Was is the loss of a lover? The loss of a child? Was it a feeling of hopelessness? Or was it something else entirely? Something that I could not begin to imagine or conceptualize?

I thought about my own life. How happy I was. The worst I had to worry about was getting to school on time so that I wouldn’t miss my lab, and here was a human that literally bore the weight of the world, not on his shoulders, but on his soul. I wanted to rip out the joy that I was feeling out of my chest and hand it to him. I wanted to open the car door, run out and hug him, and tell him that he didn’t need to be sad. That there was Someone who gives joy freely. But I didn’t. Because all that I thought I just couldn’t. I have no idea what it was, but something kept me bound in me seat, forbidding me to move, leaving me only to stare. “He looks really sad doesn’t he?” said my mom, staring at the man over my shoulder. Then the light changed and we drove off, leaving the lachrymose man behind.

I’m sure that I may never see him again, or that one day I’ll even forget, like I’ve forgotten many others. But I will never forget that sadness.

Wherever you are tonight sir, I hope that you’re not sad anymore…