Stories and Lives

Everyone has a story.

The man at the bus stop, checking his watch over and over again. The clerk at the grocery store, forcing a grin all day long. The kid sitting in the back of the classroom, scowling at everyone. The old woman working in her garden, smiling sadly at a bed of roses.

Individual threads in the woven tapestry of this world, heavy with the weight of what has come before and what they fear will happen next.

I can see all of it. The thoughts and the fears, the befores and the to-comes. Everyone has a story, and I can read them all.

The man is late to work again, and is afraid he’s going to be laid off. The clerk is afraid to seem awkward, casting up a smile as a defense mechanism against the world. The kid is terrified of their future, terrified of what happens at home if they fail this class. The old woman is trying not to cry, reminded of her lost love every time she looks at a rose.

I honestly don’t know what this is, what I can do. Every time I see someone, I see their life, from their birth to the present, unfold before me in a single moment. It’s all painted in my mind’s eye, their choices, their actions, their memories, their fears. I know that normal people can’t do what I do, but I don’t think my ability is a superpower or anything like that. If it was, I’d be some kind of hero, somebody to put on a pedestal and to wish for when things go wrong.

I’ve never wanted that. I just want to help. If you see enough people, see enough stories, see enough pain, you begin to realize that the world can be kind of a terrible place. People get hurt. People lose themselves. People hurt each other. It’s all just another page in the book, another part of the plot. But it’s painful all the same.

I’ll tell you a couple of stories, if you like. I know a lot of them.

***

I met Ellie MacDonald at a little cafe in the city. She was a young woman, sitting in a booth by herself, staring blankly out the window. She clutched a mug of coffee, but it had gone cold long ago.

Ellie MacDonald was born in this city. She had lived here all her life. She had a lovely childhood, and parents that loved her, and worked at a well-paying job at an accounting firm. But this wasn’t the life she wanted. She wanted to explore, to go far, far away and experience something new and different and marvelous. But instead, she sat in the cafe every day, sitting, staring out the window. She was too afraid to go, too frustrated to stay.

One glance shared all of this with me, all of the frustration and anger. One glance told me that she was lost.

I hopped off the stool I was occupying at the end of the cafe’s counter, and made my way towards her, sliding into her booth across from her. She turned away from the window, startled.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Ellie MacDonald?” I said.

She blinked in surprise. “Yes? How do you know my name?”

“Have you ever been to Europe?”

“No?” she replied, still confused. There was a pause, and then she said, much more quietly: “I wish, though.”

“You could go,” I said. “Take a year off, fly around the world.”

She was silent for another moment. “I could, but why would I? I have everything I need right here.”

“Do you?” I asked, my voice quiet. “Ellie MacDonald, you’re unhappy and you know it. And I’m sorry for that. These kind of feelings are a terrible thing. But you need to be brave. You need to fight back. You need to do not what you feel like you need to do, but what you want to do. This is your story, and if it doesn’t take place in this city, it doesn’t have to. You have everything you need to explore the world; you just need to be brave. And I believe you can do it.”

She sat there in stunned silence, staring at me in shock. But I could already see the cogs in her brain working. I could already see her story re-writing itself.

I gave her a gentle smile, and stood up from the booth.

I was already to the door when she called back to me.

“Wait! What do you mean? I don’t even know who you are!”

But I was already gone.

***

Ellie MacDonald wrote a book about her travels. I picked it up in the store a couple years after that conversation. She never mentions me, but she does talk about feeling a lot better after she left her old life.

She says her story wouldn’t have been very interesting otherwise.

If there’s one thing I’ve discovered, being like me, it’s that words are magical things. If you put them together right, they can heal. They can inspire. They can change your life.

***

Arthur Hendricks sat on the side of the road with his dog Masie, a cardboard sign out in front of him that said “SPARE CHANGE?” It was cold out, and just starting to rain. He wore an old, muddy jacket, and sat hunched over, trying to shelter himself from the wind.

Arthur Hendricks’ life had once been much different. He was loud and exuberant and jovial, with a large group of friends and a penchant for alcohol. But everything changed when he came in late to work with a hangover for the fourth time in a week. He lost his job, then his friends, then his home. His life slid out from under him, and the only thing he had left was Masie.

People didn’t flock to his charismatic presence anymore. People didn’t even seem to realize that he existed. He was just another fixture of the street, like a trash can or a lamp post. Every time someone passed him without even a glance, his heart broke a little more.

I don’t understand how people do that. How they can see someone as less than human, just another object on the street. So I sat down beside him on the sidewalk. He stared at me, suspicious.

“Can I pet your dog?” I asked.

He cocked his head, confused, but he gave a nod.

Arthur Hendricks wasn’t a loud person anymore. He hardly spoke at all, his tongue weighed down by the pain written into his story.

I didn’t talk to him, either. I just sat there, stroking Masie’s matted fur. Slowly, minute by minute, the silence radiating from him turned from suspicious and hostile to accepting and almost grateful.

I don’t know how long we were there, but when the shadows began to lengthen on the street, I looked up into Arthur Hendricks’ face.

He smiled at me. Just a brief movement of his lips, a gentle sparkle in his eyes, but it was there. A smile like the sun peeking through a break in the clouds. A smile like a little ray of hope, of kindness, of human compassion.

I smiled back at him, then stood up. I fished a twenty-dollar bill out of my pocket and handed it to him. He looked at it in surprise, and in the crease of his brow, I could see his story begin to change.

“Good luck, Arthur Hendricks,” I said. Then I walked off down the street.

I could feel his eyes on my all the way down the block. Eyes smiling softly in the growing twilight.

***

I never saw Arthur Hendricks again. I don’t know what happened to him and Masie. I don’t know what happened next in their story.

But sometimes, people just need a friend. Someone to comfort them when they feel low. Where Ellie MacDonald needed words, he needed kindness. It’s small acts like this, I’ve realized, that can change the course of people’s lives.

***

There are countless other stories like those of Ellie MacDonald and Arthur Hendricks. I see them everywhere I go, every time I go out into the world. You never know where your story goes, or if it will slip out of your control. There is so much frustration, so much fear, so much pain, but that’s what makes it a good story.

And of course, when things get really, really bad, there’s always hope. There are words to make you brave, and kindness to heal your wounds.

That’s why I do what I do. I think I was given this ability for a reason. Like I said, I don’t think it’s a superpower. I don’t belong on a pedestal. I just want to help as many people as I can.

Everyone has a story. And I’m here to help them write it.