I'm standing on the sidewalk, barefoot.
The pavement is hot.
I've just been walking along the beach, the sand warm and soft under my feet, trying to practice "grounding", which is some sort of new age spiritual thing about "reconnecting with the Earth" or whatever.
I'm waiting to cross the road, feeling somewhat serene and peaceful, for the first time all day, and a guy on a small electric scooter locks eyes with me and sticks out his middle finger.
Somehow, what is maybe only two or three seconds feels like a full minute. It's as though time is standing still just long enough to be able to notice every possible aspect of this human being who is intent on insulting me.
He's wearing a wrinkled black shirt, with a pocket square.
His face is totally blank, emotionless.
His arms are pale.
And he just stares right at me, his middle finger outstretched and furiously pointed forwards, and keeps on riding. Gone.
For a second, I have no reaction at all. I'm drawing an emotional blank. Then, before I even notice myself doing it, I'm running after him. It's involuntary. I just start running.
My body is in motion and my mind is absent.
I don't know what I plan to do, exactly.
Grab him off of his electric scooter?
Inflict violence upon him?
Politely ask for a written apology?
It's unclear.
What is clear is I'm chasing after him. Full on.
Except, I'm barefoot, running on hot pavement, not paying much attention. It only takes a few strides before my right foot lands squarely on a small rock, incapacitating myself momentarily.
I start cursing, limping awkwardly around on my left leg. A man who is walking his dog looks at me quizzically, with a slightly mocking tone: "You alright, buddy?"
"Yeah, all good" I mutter back, giving a polite sort of wave that communicates ‘just let me be embarrassed on my own, please’
The rock is stuck to the bottom of my foot. I brush it off. No cut. No blood. I'm fine.
It dawns on me me that I don't even know why I was running. Or what I really would have done if I had caught up to him, if anything at all. Perhaps that would have only amplified my confusion.
I take a couple of deep breathes. In and out, in and out. And I realize I'm not really angry. Or even offended. Mostly, I'm just confused.
Standing there on the sidewalk, gently putting weight back on both feet, I watch our mysterious / malicious stranger ride down the rest of the road, wondering if maybe he is giving the finger to every pedestrian he can.
"Maybe it's a social experiment!" I find myself thinking, ridiculously, as if that explains it perfectly. Or perhaps this is some sort of behavioural defect, in which being hostile towards strangers creates a sense of happiness.
In any case, I watch him get closer to a group of people walking, all of them holding towels and drinks, clearly headed for the beach. I wait for him to turn his gaze towards them, to stick out his arm and inflict these carefree citizens with his passive aggressive behaviour.
But, he doesn't. He doesn't do anything at all. He just rides past, each hand firmly fixed atop the handles of his electric scooter, his eyes pointed forwards.
For a few more moments, he is in plain view. And then he's around the bend in the road, out of sight.
And for some bizarre reason, I find myself a little bit upset he didn't finger the group of people. It makes no sense, obviously. Why would I want them to experience this same sense of bewilderment? I genuinely don't. But yet, on the most childish level of my character, I feel personally offended knowing he only saw me as a fit candidate to express his disdain towards.
My mind starts going through the usual tricks:
- do I know this guy?
- did I wrong this guy?
- who is this guy?
- why is he mad at me?
- is he on drugs?
- is he off his drugs?
- what kind of drugs could you be on while maintaining balance?
But, none of it is creating a satisfying conclusion.
And slowly, the rather obvious truth of the situation starts to become clear: it simply doesn't make sense.
Because, sometimes, it just is what it is.
Sometimes people just do stuff.
And weirdly, that can be sort of difficult to accept.
I want to forge meaning out of it. I want it to be about something, anything! I want to be outraged. Or wronged. Or have a unique take on it.
But, sometimes a guy just rides past you on a scooter and gives you the finger. And sometimes, that's it. Sometimes there is no deeper meaning. Sometimes it's just that damn random and silly.
My brain doesn't like that, though. I want to find a narrative! Where I can feel justifiably outraged. Or attacked. Or wrongly persecuted. I need a higher moral ground to stand on and judge from! I want to make sense of it.
But, why? There's nothing to make sense of, clearly. It just is what it is. He did what he did. For no apparent or clear reason.
I know I didn't do anything to "deserve" it. But deserve doesn't have anything to do with it, really.
Sometimes, a guy just rides past you on an electric scooter and gives you the finger. And that's really all there is to it.
No deeper meaning. No double entendre. Nothing. And that's okay. It just is.
You can get outraged, if you want. You can get mad, if you want. You can be upset and appalled. You can even try to make it deep.
You can say it's an "invitation to practice empathy!".
You can say it's a "practical way to participate in radical acceptance of others actions!".
You can say he is "teaching you the importance of forgiveness!".
You can say whatever you want. You can believe whatever you want. You can come up with whatever meaning that serves you. You can make up anything you wish.
But, the same question lingers, waiting to be answered: why?
Sometimes things simply are what they are. You can judge it. You can say decide it's an injustice. And you could be absolutely correct.
But, ultimately, it just is.
And, as I let that sit with me, I didn't really like it.
It felt apathetic. Like it was somehow forcing me to be a victim of the circumstances. The very notion that I should accept it at face value, and not try to direct my energy in to changing it's shape or meaning or impact, felt disempowering.
It felt uncomfortable.
And yet, despite it all, it was what it was.
But maybe, if you look beyond the surface of the simplistic nature of it, that can become a encouraging thought, instead of a frustrating one. There's not always a hidden meaning. Or a deeper truth. Or something to learn.
Sometimes we're just doing that part ourselves. Adding in things that feel good to add in. Reaffirming truths we want to reaffirm. Telling ourselves the things we want to hear.
Which, is fine. But sometimes there's a bit of peace in realizing it's just random. Realizing that it's not always personal. That it probably has nothing to do with you at all. Sometimes it's simply stupid. Sometimes it just is.
Sometimes a guy rides by you on an electric scooter and gives you the finger.
It might be out of place. It might make you outraged. It might feel like it demands a universal reason. And yet, it just is.
Someone else's actions are their actions.
Their decisions are their decisions.
Their mess is their mess.
And all of it, at any given moment, might end up colliding directly in to you.
And that isn't fair. It's not okay, either. People should be held accountable and we shouldn't simply brush everything off as a meaningless encounter.
But there's something kind of nice about not needing to make every moment a big moment.
There's something kind of nice about letting yourself off the hook of having to constantly manufacture meaning.
There's something kind of nice about not having to "figure out what it all means" sometimes.
Because there's always countless possible meanings you could choose to zoom in on. But, sometimes it just is.
Sometimes, that's it. Sometimes people are just weird. Sometimes life just won't make sense to us.
Because it doesn't have to make sense to us.
Life doesn't owe us explanations.
Even when we want them.
Even when we feel like we deserve them.
Sometimes life just is.
The rest of it, is on us.
And we're just making it up as we go.
Making It Up As We Go
Wow. I completely understand this. So many times people have made fun of me, thrown a bottle at me just because they think I am ugly, comment as they ride by about my weight, etc., etc. and it totally would ruin my day. I would wonder what it is about me that they picked me out. Wonder if I am that ugly, fat, unworthy of acceptance, etc., that it takes so much out of me. Thank you for sharing!
And what's sad and simultaneously funny about this is that the older you get, the more random fingers life brings your way. And you lose the desire to make any sense of it cuz the next inexplicable finger is just around the corner. So, the only thing I have found that calms some of the inner rage is to spend two minutes writing a list of cool things that have happened, on the same day as the finger. Even just the tiniest things like "three people on the bus called out thank you to the driver" or "my cat woke me up a bit early so that I could give him a tummy rub" take the sting of the finger away and I can continue on my way with a smile.