I was lost in a daydream on the train today. A cargo ship ladened with containers 5 high on the deck tooled slowly and gracefully through the bay. The bridge could just see over the top like a child peeking from behind the couch on Christmas morning. Look at all the presents! All I wanted in the world was to be on that bridge headed for foreign ports that smelled like cinnamon. I was lost in my dream staring out the window of that train. As we approached the last station before the train went underground and my muse was lost I glimpsed an old haggard man with a grey beard in a black fedora. He got up and adjusted his luggage like he planned to depart. He was a little bit too wild in the eyes but was clean and didn’t seem to be homeless. I returned to my dream, lost in my music, longing to travel.

After a little time passed while we were still at the station I looked down and a 20 something was trying to get my attention. He was nodding his head in the direction of the front of the car so I turned to see what was up. The old man was standing next to me. In my bubble. Staring straight at me lips moving and I heard nothing but my music. As I turned to give him my full attention he stopped talking and turned back to his seat and walked away. He spent the rest of the trip staring long-fully out the window, much as I myself was doing.

He reminded me a lot of what I envision that I would look like in 40 years time. My mind began to wander and I thought to myself, what if in 40 years you could come back and give yourself a message. Something that would alter your life for the infinitely better. What if everyone could come to themselves as a stranger for a moment and mutter a life changing sentence like “take the blue pill” or “don’t let her go”, something life changing and profound. And what if through the haze of time you forgot that you often rode the train as a young man with microscopic headphones that no one could see through your shaggy hair and you passed your message on to deaf ears. Thinking that when you return your life will be completely transformed into the one you should have had. The life that only a lifetime of not having it can appreciate. Only to be cheated by fate and forced to swallow your lot in life like everyone else. Forced to live with the road taken. But for a brief instant as an old man you had the knowledge that you did what you had set out to do and that you succeeded. Even if only for a brief instant like a train ride in a spring afternoon through your past. On your return would you die of heartbreak or would you cherish the time you had left?

This is what I thought about all the way home. I never did speak to the man. When he did get up to get off at my stop he stood next to me and looked intently at his reflection in the window with the darkness of the tunnel beginning to fade, He then smartly adjusted his black fedora until it was just right, glanced at me with a faint smile and disappeared into the crowd as the doors opened. And I felt sad.

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