Skippin’ and Hoppin’
There’s a resigned look on the faces of most people in the hospital waiting room, and I suppose my face is one of them. I’m crammed with sick people into long rows of hard chairs forming the horizon between a worn orange carpet and the florescent fuzz of an off-white ceiling. There is a television, of course, perpetually tuned to the most irritating program that mid morning television has to offer and set at a volume too quiet to follow but just loud enough to prevent reading. Every now and then, at a maddeningly infrequent and unpredictable interval, a name is called from the far door and another pale old person gathers their newspaper or whatever and shuffles back towards what I presume is a doctor. I’m actually not sick, I just need blood work done, 30 seconds of time and an ace bandage, but I’m not sure what sort of time investment and exotic medicines will be required once I catch whatever is oozing out of the woman next to me. Its safe to say that I could think of a million other places I’d rather be.
Then I hear the elevator ding, another in an endless assault of annoying sounds, followed by a loud clatter. I can feel my scowl as I look up to see a tall, almost emaciated black man with a walker roll out from the doors. In short, sporadic movements his walker glides on its wheels fluidly forward, only to be followed by a desperate lunge of dragging angles as the old man’s body catches up. His body is so old and wrecked with time that its just as likely the source of the clatter as his walker and he reminds me of an old car in his dogged, almost machine-like determination to get where he’s going. His progress is slow and painful to watch, so much so in fact that not one but three people get up in an instant and offer to guide him wherever he is going. When they get to him and begin to reach for his arms he just smiles and say’s “I’ll get there, I’m just skippin’ and hoppin’. Yessir, just skippin’ and hoppin’”and its not just what he says but how he says it in such a cheerful way that for an instant I want to be older so I can identify with his acceptance of a slowly failing body. It seems an awful lot like being at peace. I’d love to have that kind of peace.
Then I realize that I have been sitting here making my trip to get blood work as excruciating as possible. For a solid hour I've been cataloging every little sound and flicker, every facial tic from the guy across from me like I’m going to get reimbursed for this unpleasantness one day. But I don’t hear or see any of it now. All of my attention is focused a guy with the personality of a war hero dragging his rickety frame across the floor with honest, visible joy. Going to the bathroom must be a thousand times more excruciating for this man than the last hour I've been sitting here has been to me. Yet he’s the happy one. It’s almost like he’s not bothered by his circumstances. Then I realize: the lion’s share of being at peace has nothing to do with your circumstances and everything to do with your view of those circumstances.
So now I change the way I sit here and wait. I try not to long for a change of scenery. I think about how well my body feels and how lucky I am to feel no pain. I think about how nice it is to not be at work, to just be resting my mind. I think about how the staff here helps thousands of people, in order of appointment, every single day. I realize that I overlook simple facts like this every day as I clatter noisily and inefficiently through life. The key isn't to reduce the noise, or become more efficient, maybe I can’t. The solution is to change my attitude so I’m more likely to feel myself skippin’ and hoppin’ through life, even when I’m slogging and dragging through the trenches of everyday existence.
