A hop, skip and a jump

The long drive back home through evening traffic was something I dread. The boredom of the stop-and-go traffic drains my energy and kills concentration. I got into my car to start the hour-long ride home from work. As I turned the ignition switch, the fuel gauge reminded me that I needed gas. I buckled my seat belt and drove out of the parking lot to the nearest Chevron gas station which was just a block away.

I pulled into the gas station, stopped the car and unbuckled. The day was just another drab end-of-workday day. I swiped my credit card, selected 87 octane and started pumping gas. I paced along the side of the car waiting for the car to get its fill so I can head home.

There was no other car in the gas station. I noticed a man walk towards me. He looked disheveled and seemed to lack energy by the way he dragged himself. As he got closer, I could tell that he was a homeless man. Sacramento has a growing population of homeless people, sadly displaced from the mainstream of life.

The stranger came straight to me. He stood about 5 feet 6 inches tall and was shorter than me. He had a stoop that made him look even shorter in close quarters. He looked old, perhaps 50-ish. His face was covered with many layers of dirt mixed with dry sweat that clearly told me that it had not seen water and soap in several days. His hair was unkempt, frazzled and in disarray. He wore a dirty brown tattered coat which was probably serving many functions including keeping him warm at night and hiding the soiled clothes under it.

He looked up to me with dull eyes and said “do you have some change to spare?”

I have a soft corner for the downtrodden. Especially if they are old. When I look at men, women and children who are homeless and seeking alms, I say to myself, “…I wonder how they ended up in this state…?” Each of them would have a story to tell.

Recently before this gas-station-encounter, I learned a lesson in compassion from a security guard at work after which I made it a point to always have some cash in my wallet. Not only that, I also made a promise to myself that when someone is in dire straits and asks for “spare change”, I would open my wallet and give the person the first currency bill that I see, be it $1, $5, $10 or $20. I started doing this as a game with the Universe, allowing it to pick the random dollar bill that would make a small difference in someone’s life.

That day, the Universe beckoned me to spare a $20 bill to this homeless man. I took out the $20 bill and handed it to him.

The man raised his right hand to receive it. I saw his soiled fingers. The wrinkles on his hand and fingers provided a natural canvas on which the dirt painted an interesting vignette, a quiet tale of his plight.

He took a close look what he just received. His face lit up. A smile appeared from somewhere and tightened the skin on his face. The patterns of dirt on his face suddenly took on a different form, painting the happiness that he was experiencing right in front of me. His eyes widened. He could not believe that he was holding a $20 bill in his hands.

In a flash, he hugged me and said “Thank you and Gold bless you”.

I was taken aback but felt a surge of happiness flow through me.

The man’s love and gratitude were pure. His disheveled and unkempt demeanor was eclipsed by the pure love of his hug. I reciprocated with equal happiness which was sudden and spontaneous. It did no matter that we were strangers, with vastly different social circumstances. We did not even know each other’s names but had connected instantly on a divine plane.

The man turned around and did a hop, skip and a jump. Like a child who just received a candy, the man could not hold back his happiness. I could tell that he felt on top of the world. The joy gave him the warmth of a loving home, albeit for a few minutes. The ups and the downs of his life that brought him to his current state, the hardships, the repents, guilt, anger and the scars that they might have etched an indelible script of his life simply seemed to have taken pause to watch the man hop, skip and and jump.

I watched him as he disappeared into the horizon still hopping, stepping and jumping.

The gas tank was full now. My heart was full too. I was ready and happy to take on the long drive home through evening traffic.