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From WikiStory

 The Man Who Let Strangers Into His House

Today is a day like any other day.

That’s my first thought, when I wake up, in that very first moment of consciousness. The light is filtering through the curtains. I’m a little bit groggy, tempted to hit the snooze button one more time, even though I know I’ll just wake up 5 minutes later just as tired.

Then my mind starts, going through everything that happened yesterday, everything left unsettled. Going through everything I have to do today, and how I feel about it. My mind, my faithful companion.

I’m downstairs fixing myself some chai tea, on a day like any other day, when there comes a knock at my door. “Rap, rap rap rap,” goes the knock, quick and hurried, like it’s a matter of great urgency that I answer the door right this second instead of add a spoonful of badly needed honey to this tea. And besides, I think, who knocks 4 times? Everyone knows the courtesy knock is 3 times. I briefly consider letting Mr. Knock 4 Times wait just to spite him, but curiosity gets me in the end, and I answer the door.

There stands a man in a serious hurry.

I see it right away. Foot tapping rapidly, presumably to the beat of his own speed-hurtling mind. Creased forehead worry lines deeply etched, like a sculpture that all of a sudden decided to stand up and start walking, with a purpose.

And if all this wasn’t enough of a sign, there hangs from his neck, like an enormous scoreboard announcing to all the score of life, the biggest necklace clock I’ve ever seen.

It’s rectangular shaped, fastened to his shirt with pins to assure ultimate efficient movement. The clock features huge, red numbers, all the way up to the hundredth of a second. It hangs there prominently, as if to remind all of us that WE ARE LOSING PRECIOUS SECONDS MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU DOING LOOK AT THIS CLOCK MOVE MOVE MOVE THERE ARE THINGS TO GET DONE!

I suddenly start feeling nervous about all of the things I need to get done today, but at that moment the man starts his quick, clipped speech, speaking perfectly without wasting a second on pauses or needless adjectives.

“Elias, right?” He asks. I affirm his question with a nod. “You’ve been expecting me, I think.” he says.

I most certainly was not, but at this point, what with his huge flashing clock, I’m just so fascinated that I decide to let him in. “Let’s have a tea,” I say, opening the door.

As we sit down, I finally notice the arsenal of books, papers, and backup pens he is carrying with him, as though he’s about to go to war on all unfinished things in the world. I fix him a tea. Too preoccupied with his books, he doesn’t bother to look up.

“So,” I say to the strange fellow. “What’s your name?” “Wuri,” he hastily answers.

“Wuri,” I say. “Is that Austrian?”

But he doesn’t bother to respond. He’s already immersed in his papers, occupying a different world, a world where it doesn’t really matter if he answers my question. A world where every sip of tea I take is 3.33 seconds, according to his clock, where I could have been doing something a lot more productive!

I look over at what he’s doing. Adding up very large figures, it appears. I look down the page and see there are more figures. Like an ant colony that just doesn’t end.

His handwriting astounds me. The ultimate lesson in efficiency. Block letters, no wasted marks or scribbles. He writes like a computer, but better.

I’m briefly distracted by his untouched tea, its steam escaping into the world to be swallowed up by room temperature, a tea fated to soon be lukewarm and unsatisfying, if left unattended much longer...

Wuri looks up at me fixating on his tea, gives me a slightly disgusted look, as if to say, “Shouldn’t you be getting work done right now?”

I look guiltily away, bemoaning the 32.45 seconds that Wuri’s huge clock informs me I have lost forever, never to recoup. I suddenly begin to remember everything I need to do today, like an angry swarm of bees bouncing around in my mind. I don’t have time for this, I think. I don’t have time to entertain potentially Austrian guests who won’t confirm their nationality.

I look again at Wuri, who’s writing notes in his planner: “Wasted five minutes entering Elias’s house, must cut dinner short tonight to regain lost time.” I think, should I have a planner like this? Should I even be cooking dinner, when I could heat up a hot pocket and gain back all these wasted minutes of the day?

I’m interrupted from my thought process by a soft, hesitant knock at my door. I undo the multiple double bolts (one must be careful in this neighborhood), the metal latch, and twist the lock, and stand face to face with one of the most timid, shy, uncomfortable looking people I’ve ever met.

He averts his eyes when I try to make eye contact, eyes glued to the ground like he’s lost an important treasure there. I’m partially sickened by his lack of self-confidence. I’ve had my bouts of shyness and low self-esteem in the past, but never like this.

Hiding my disdain for his discomfort, and used to strange visitors after Wuri, I invite him in for some tea. “Are you sure?” he says in a voice hardly more than a whisper. “I’m not such great company, and I don’t want to bother you.” For some reason, my heart starts to melt at his words. Like a new contact lens has been placed over my old ones, I see in his face, past the forced smile and nervous twitching eyes, something I recognize. Something I remember. Before I can get a finger on it, he shyly accepts my invitation, and follows me to the kitchen.

“What’s your name, stranger?” I ask the fellow as we walk to the kitchen. “Lacky,” he whispers. “Lacky!” I say louder than I mean to, to make up for his quiet shyness. “That’s wacky!” Like the plane that forgot to bring its engine along for the ride, my sorry attempt at humor and rhyme crashes and burns. But I think I see the beginning of a half smile on his face...though this could be his nervous twitch acting up.

Lacky enters the kitchen and stares intensely at Wuri for a fraction of a second (.34 seconds, to be exact, according to Wuri's clock) before again searching the ground for his precious treasure. Wuri, hurriedly scribbling away, doesn’t bother to look up at the intrusion. I try to avoid staring at Wuri’s magnificent flashing clock, which reminds me of everything I haven’t done today.

Figuring I might have a better chance at conversation with Lacky than Wuri the Tazmanian work devil, I probe him for answers. “So Lacky,” I start off. “What do you do?” Lacky tries to begin his response but all that comes out is a nervous squeak, like a mouse who narrowly averts a double barred mouse trap. He looks at me in shame, and I balance my unexplainable disdain for his shyness, like rising bile in my throat, with this empathy I feel for him way down deep. The empathy wins, and I give him a quick, friendly smile before searching for my own precious treasure on the ground, figuring this might make him more comfortable.

It does, and his second attempt at speech sounds much more human. “I’m a university student,” he says. “But I can’t get over this shyness. I hate it. I hate it I hate it. I know what I want to be. I see all these people around me, confident, assertive, not squeaking like mouses when they talk, and I want to be like them. I’m lacking, I’m lacking, everything they have.”

“Listen pal,” Wuri says without looking up from his planner. I try not to notice the fact that Lacky’s speech took exactly 56 seconds. “What does all this matter? Just get your work done. Put everything you’ve got into your work, manage your time scrupulously so you don’t lose precious time staring at steam floating into the air (I shamefully look away), and once all your work is done, once you’ve got your career, then you can be happy.”

Lacky, losing the shy confidence he had gained during his response to me, looks down and nods. I almost start to do the same, getting carried away by the logic of what Wuri says, and then this quote pops into my head.

“Can anxious thought add a single day to your life?” 

Where did I hear this quote? I can’t remember, but spurred on by its message, I decide to respond to Wuri.

“Why?” I ask.

“What did you say?” Wuri asks while adding up some very large figures.

“Why?” I repeat, this time a little more forcefully, a shade of anger coloring my question.

Lacky looks up from the ground, interested in the passion leaking from me.

“Why?”

Like an old wall holding back an ancient river, those three letters make tiny cracks in Wuri’s exterior. He’s trying not to pay attention to the “Why?” but I see he’s become flustered while adding up his large figures, and I notice he forgot to carry the 3 in one of his additions, a rookie mistake. I stand up now, push my chair back, making a sound that echoes around my linoleum kitchen. Suddenly I remember a story I heard long ago about echoes.

An old man and his young grandson are hiking in the wilderness. The young boy, exhausted, starts to fall behind as they make their way up the steep, rocky mountain. All of a sudden the boy trips on a rock and yells out in anger. A sharp echo returns his angry yell to him.

Never before having heard an echo, the boy looks up in surprise. “Who are you?” he yells out. “Who are you?” comes the response. Enraged from his fall, and from not being answered, the boy lashes out. “You’re a coward!” he screams. “You’re a coward!” comes the reply. About to yell out more obscenities, the boy looks up to see his old grandpa hovering over him, deep etched smile lines like crow’s feet around his eyes. He helps the boy to his feet. “Watch this,” the grandpa says. “You are strong!” the grandpa yells out, surprising the boy with the force in his old lungs. “You are strong!” comes the reply. “You are an animal!” the grandpa yells out. “You are an animal!” the mountain responds. “You see, grandson? Whatever you put out there, Life returns to you. Yell out in anger and in fear, and you’re sure to live that reality. Yell out in passion, strength and love, and you’ll have that returned to you, every single day of your life. The young boy looks at his old grandpa for a second, eyes filled with determination, before sprinting past him, determined not to let the old man beat him up the mountain.

Keeping the echo story in my mind, I exchange my anger for understanding. “Why?” I ask Wuri one more time. Wuri looks up, makes eye contact, says nothing. What is in his face? Have I seen that same look in my face at the end of some of my days? Is it a look that answers my question better than anything he could say with words, a look that says, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”?

“Wuri, have some tea with me,” I say. He pushes his books to the side, a powerful gesture considering he’s been nursing them ever since he arrived, and picks up his mug for a sip.

The cracks in his wall are widening, water starting to flow. I don’t even need to ask questions. “You know,” he starts. “No one has ever asked me that.”

“I’ve been asked lots of questions in my life.” he continues. “Have you finished your homework yet?’ my parents asked me every night when I was younger. ‘Can you find the derivative?’ my Calculus teacher asked me. ‘What do you want to do after college?’ people asked me in the university. They never asked me why. Did you know I wanted to be a famous violinist when I was young?” Wuri asks me.

“I did not know this,” I say.

“I was like Lacky when I was young, shy and timid. My parents thought violin might open me up, carry me places that might help me get into a good college. They didn’t realize, it carried me to a different world, one where my fingers were as light as air, one where shyness and timidity didn’t exist because they didn’t matter, it was just me using these strings to play the music of my soul, an ancient beat passed down through my lineage, a song which had been placed on pause for a long time.”

“Do you know what my parents did?” Wuri asks me.

I feel this dread welling up in me, because I think I do know.

“They took my violin away when it was time to study for the SATs. They said the violin had carried me far, but that the SATs would carry me farther. So I went to college, got a business degree, and I add up figures. I am really good at adding up figures, it turns out.”

“Why didn’t you put up a fight to keep your violin?” I ask him.

“Because,” he says. “Because what they said made sense. Everything everyone tells me makes sense. But when you put those three letters together to form that simple question ‘Why?’ I have no answer. Suddenly nothing makes sense.”

“You know what it reminds me of?” he says. “It reminds me of something Jesus asked to his disciples: “Can anxious thought add a single day to your life?”

My mouth stays open long enough to catch a whole swarm of airborne diseases. “Jesus said that?” I ask him, in a state of shock. “That quote popped into my head a few minutes ago. Actually it’s the whole reason this conversation started.” Wuri nods nonchalantly and accepts this fact like it’s an everyday occurrence.

But before I can think more about this fantastical coincidence, I hear a distinct knock at the door, slow, steady, inevitable, like it’s just a matter of time till I answer and let the knocker in. I walk to the door slowly, collecting myself from the powerful conversation I just had with Wuri. I undo the multiple double bolts, the metal latch, and twist the lock. The door swings open, and as I find myself face to face with this stranger, I think about slamming the door in his face.

Because he is sad. He is really, really sad. His face doesn’t hide it, like I’m used to. He’s not putting up a fight, like he should. He is sad, like it’s some fact of life, like that’s just what there is, and there’s nothing to do about it.

I snap out of my revelry, realizing I’ve been carried far away from here. I think about my impulse to slam the door in his face. I could do it, and he wouldn’t force his way in. But then there’s that knock. That slow, steady knock. He would knock and knock forever, indefatigable, and eventually my front door would break down, and he would enter, because it’s not really that strong, as much as it appears with its fine bronze finish. To tell the truth, that front door has given me trouble ever since I installed it.

So I invite him in, even though a big part of me wants to slam the door and hide. “Who are you?” I ask. “Sayid,” he replies. I invite him to take some tea, trying to ignore this feeling of dread welling up in me.

When he walks into my kitchen the effect he has on Wuri and Lacky is incredible. Wuri re- buries his nose in his figures, triple-checking his big red clock to see how many more minutes he’ll have to cut from dinner, and Lacky refuses to look at him.

I can’t stand it any more. “What’s wrong with you?” I ask him.

“I’m sad,” he replies.

Figuring the last time I asked “why” I had some success, I re-ask the question. “Why?”

“What answer do you want?” he says. “I have lots of them. I’ve practiced over the years, because when people see you’re sad, they want to know why, as though there’s a simple one sentence answer that will fit into this tiny box. They want to know why immediately because once you have this one sentence answer you can fix this problem, and the sickness won’t spread to others. It will be contained, quarantined, and surgically operated on, until you are better, and can again function in society.”

“It’s incredible the reaction people have against me,” Sayid continues. Sometimes they want to slam the door in my face (I guiltily join Lacky in his treasure hunt for a second), sometimes they lash out at me in anger. You want to know why? Because they see something in me that reminds them of themselves.”

“You want to know why I’m sad?” he continues. “I didn’t get my work done today (Wuri nervously looks up before returning to his figures). I’m shy and unconfident when I talk to people (Lacky looks at Sayid with some of his own sadness). I don’t have a girlfriend, and I’ve never felt that love like they show in the movies. I’m sad because I’m sad, and I don’t think I should be, and that makes me more sad. Which reason do you want, today?”

I don’t know what to say to him. I want to take his sadness away. I want to protect him. In this moment, his sadness is my sadness. Suddenly this memory explodes in my head, dark fireworks, blinding me. I watch it like a movie projector.

I’m 13 years old, and a little eccentric. I’m with 7 childhood friends at a cabin in the snow. We’re upstairs in one of the rooms, the adults are downstairs. For some reason, I decide to see how long I can stare at a specific spot on the wall. One of my childhood friends notices this, and when he finds out what I’m doing, he starts to ridicule me. Like a vicious plague the ridiculing spreads until everyone in the room is making fun of me. All I can do is keep staring at the spot on the wall, pretending I’m not hearing this, pretending their words don’t jab into every single part of my sensitive heart.

I leave the room, lay down in the room next door. I bury my face in the pillow, and sob with every ounce of pain I felt in that room, every ounce of pain I stared into that spot on the wall because there was no where else to put it. My sobs don’t cover up their voices, my childhood friends, as they continue to ridicule me. I am shrinking, I am awake and I am shrinking. I don’t know where my body is. I sleep.

I remember waking up, apologizing to my 7 childhood friends because I didn’t know what else to do. “I’m sorry about last night,” I tell them at the time. “Don’t worry about it man,” they say.

I’m about to tell Sayid about my memory when the projector screen turns on again and I keep remembering.

I’m 14. I’m on my computer. My mom comes into my room, asks how I’m doing. An anger boils up in me. She looks at me with concern and love and that makes me angry. I say fine with a controlled voice. Fed up with months of hearing the word “fine,” she leaves and goes to her room, slamming her door with anger and force.

The tears start. I find a tissue but it’s like trying to stop a flood with your hands. I am crying. For a long time I protected myself from crying, but now there’s nothing to do but cry and hope somebody, somewhere, hears me. I have cried every day in my heart but no one has heard me.

She hears me, because she loves me, and she knows. She enters my room and I am crying, bawling, every part of me shaking with an angst that knows no bounds. The world spins on its axis and I can’t stop it, I want it to stop but it won’t. She holds me and lets me cry, my tears and snot staining her shirt but she doesn’t care, she holds me until there is nothing left in me. I come back to reality and I am crying. Wuri and Lacky are crying too. We are all crying for our pasts, for that feeling you get when you are all alone, when you don’t want to be yourself, when, as Wuri said, everything makes sense except for that question: “Why?” I am crying for the first time in a long time. And it actually feels kind of good.

“You know, you’re the first person to let himself cry in front of me,” Sayid tells me. Suddenly a quote comes to me, like it’s always been there, waiting for me to read it.

“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” 

Where did I hear this? Where are all these ideas coming from?

I start to say the quote to Said, and halfway through, he says it in unison with me. My mouth re- opens in shock. “Sayid, where is that quote from?” I ask. “It’s a book by Jonathon Safran Foer called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” he says. It’s about a 9 year old boy whose father dies in the World Trade Center attack, and who hides his sadness by making it his mission to follow clues that lead him to people who knew his father. In the end, he finds that as he opens up to the people in his life, and accepts that terrible sadness that comes from his father’s death, there is a happiness, even among all that sadness.

“I’ve never read that book,” I say. “How did I know that quote?”

“Sometimes we know things we don’t realize we know,” he mysteriously replies. This answer doesn’t satisfy me, but another knock on the door forces me to leave it behind for a while.

It’s a whole crowd of people, noisily clamoring to get in.

“Who are all of you people?” I confusedly ask the multitude.

“You have a nice home, three meals every day, and running water, and you’re asking me who I am?” says one younger boy with dirt on his face, wearing tattered clothing. I guiltily look away. “Don’t listen to him, he’s underdressed,” says a terrifically manicured man with a prominent chin, dressed in fancy pressed slacks. I look at my own clothing, shabby in comparison.

Confused, but figuring I already have a couple of strange guests in my house, I decide to let them in. In the past I probably would have tried to shut them out, but something about this day that’s like other days tells me to let them in.

They rush my kitchen, disordering things I’ve spent a lot of time ordering. They’re packed into every single part of this room, loudly talking and fighting with each other. I feel like I can’t breathe, like I’m going to explode with all of these words and emotional people invading my space.

I see the boy with tattered clothing making his way over to me. I nervously look away. I’ve always felt this terrible guilt from people who have less than me.

“Could you spare a couple dollars,” he says, with a lung-racking cough that makes me want to crawl inside myself, for all the guilt it’s causing. I start to pull my wallet out to ease the guilt when the terrifically manicured man comes over.

“Don’t do it, Elias,” he says. “You can’t help them all. Plus, you need to make sure you have enough to get by at the end of the day.”

My head is swimming in guilt and logic. I lash out in anger. “Oh, and your fancy pressed slacks is you just getting by?” I ask him.

He looks at me smugly. “Hey, I earned this. I have a right to nice things,” he replies.

“Someone like me made those pants for a dollar per day,” says the boy with the lung-racking cough, quietly.

“I didn’t create this system, says the manicured man. He doesn’t look affected, but I’m affected enough for both of us. I can’t handle this conversation.

I walk to another section of the kitchen, and see a crowd of people engaged in an angry debate. “I am right!” says one person. “I am right!” says another person. “I am right!” says a third. “What are you guys talking about?” I ask them. They look at me for a second, not really hearing me, before continuing their active debate. “I am right!” they all say, remarkably at the exact same time.

I think that probably none of them are right, and move on. Wuri and an equally looking rushed person are in a conversation, but I notice both their hands are occupied, sending multiple text messages at the same time. Next to them are Lacky and the manicured man. Lacky is staring at the manicured man’s finely shined shoes as he gives Lacky a lecture about how to dress to gain more confidence. “Look,” he says. “Your problem is not your shyness. You just need to iron the crease out of your pants.”

Sayid is in the corner, looking extra sad, people edging away from him, not wanting to catch his sickness.

Just when I think I’ll never kick these intruders out of my kitchen and return to living a normal life, there’s another knock on the door.

The entire kitchen, sensing something special about this knock, is suddenly quiet. Deathly quiet. Like the old coal mining towns when the country switched to oil.

I gather myself before answering the knock.

It’s a girl, dressed in all yellow. I stand at the door, unable to make a sound. I stare at her, all of my internal organs mixing up all over the place, kidney near my stomach, heart somewhere near my feet. I know I shouldn’t stare but it’s all I can do, because her beauty is like a quiet whisper in my ear that says, “Shh. You don’t need to say anything.” I’ve seen attractive people my entire life, but her beauty seems to emanate from inside of her, like her physical appearance is just a manifestation of this goodness she holds deep inside.

I wish I had Wuri’s clock because I don’t even know how many seconds have passed with me standing, staring. Or maybe his clock has stopped. Time seems like a foreign concept now, like calculus, something I’ve heard of but don’t actually believe exists. What is time in a moment where you’re so perfectly there, where everything in you is there because that’s just where you want to be, where you should be, where you need to be?

This whole time her gaze has met mine, not questioning, just smilingly waiting for me to come out of my revelry. Finally she takes mercy on me and says, “Well, are you going to invite me in?” I’m about to say “Yes!” when I suddenly remember all of my strange guests, crowded in my kitchen.

“Oh shit, I think. Shit shit shit.” I realize I can’t let her see them. What would someone like her think, if she knew the people I entertained in my house? No, she can’t, she can’t. I tell her to hang on for a second, and I rush into the kitchen to hide them.

At first I’m worried they’ll take offense to being crammed in the pantry, which has always smelled slightly of cat litter (which is strange, considering I’ve never owned a cat), but they just let me usher them in, as though they’re used to being stuffed into small, dark spaces.

I rush back outside, gulp out a, “Come on in!” and she enters, followed by two little fluttering butterflies, one yellow, one striped. I watch them enter, flying next to each other like they’re old friends.

Just before we arrive to the kitchen I notice the two butterflies suddenly part ways, flying in different directions. I don’t see where they end up.

Getting my mind off butterflies, I offer her a tea, which she accepts graciously. I must say, even though I’m a bit nervous in her presence, it sure is nice to have a guest without so many flaws and problems, like my poor pantry guests.

“Who are you?” I ask her. “You don’t remember?” she smiles back at me, again mixing up my internal organs, this time sending my stomach somewhere up near my larynx.

Remember, remember, what is with all this remembering I’m doing today? You’d think I’ve been forgetting something my whole life, with all the remembering I’m having to do today. First these mysterious quotes, then these stories and histories I had forgotten, now this girl. Is Alzheimer’s just around the corner?

But when I look into her eyes, it’s like that movie projector in my brain is buried deep inside of those blue, sparkling flames.

''I’m 20 years old. Every girlfriend I’ve had has been the same thing. Our relationship starts with passion, a spark that lights this fire that was just waiting to start up inside of me. And then as quickly as it started, the flame is extinguished. I’m left feeling bad, blaming myself. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ I think. ‘Will I ever be able to love somebody without losing that love?’”

“I know that it’s just a matter of finding the right person. They will make it better, this feeling inside, this angst, loneliness.”

But the more I search someone out, the more I feel lost. I sit down one day on a bench called The Whispering Bench, so named because its curved shape makes a whisper resonate. My brain feels like that, lost in whispering thoughts resounding and resonating endlessly through my body.

And then I open my eyes. They were already open, but they weren’t really open. I open my eyes and the fall wind starts to blow through the park, picking up magnificently red and yellow and green colored leaves. I think about how beautiful these falling leaves are, how they sacrifice their life so that their tree can survive the harsh winter, leaves burrowing into the ground to form a richer soil for their tree, to be reborn in a different form. The baby phoenix, emerging from its burnt up ashes.

And then, like an answer to these thoughts, an answer to a prayer I didn’t know I had formed, I see the wind pick up a discarded piece of paper, send it end over end until it lands squarely in my lap. It’s a poem. It says “Absolutely Clear” at the top.

Don't surrender your loneliness So quickly. Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you As few human Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight Has made my eyes so soft, My voice So tender,

My need of God Absolutely Clear.

The last stanza resounds in my head like the whispering bench. “My need of God, absolutely clear.” And I realize what has been missing in my heart. I realize what I’ve been seeking out in every person but myself.

Myself. My own love. What some people call God.

My entire life I’ve sought validation. “Others will tell me if who I am is right,” I’ve thought. Some people have thought who I am is right, most haven’t. Why am I putting my alleged “happiness,” this happiness based upon a constructed identity, on others? Maybe I am good enough, I think. Maybe I can love myself.

And just when I think about starting this long process, a girl dressed in all yellow sits down on the bench next to me. She looks me in the eyes unabashedly, and I return the look. I’m afraid of silence, and would normally say something to fill it in, but something makes this silence beautiful, unforced. Our eyes remain locked. I know she can read my heart, can see this fruitless journey I’ve wandered for many years, finally realizing that I need to get dressed properly before I can start a proper journey. That I need to love myself before I can go loving anyone else.

She bids farewell in silence. Everything in me wants to break the silence, scream out for her to stop, but my heart, the part of me that really knows, lets her go. I don’t want her to be like the others, a temporary fix.''

I’m back. I’m back from a 14 year old memory that I haven’t remembered in a long time. I look at her in front of me, same obvious spirit and kindness in her face with just a few more smile lines, traces of the beginnings of friendly wrinkles on her face.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” I tell her.

She looks at me gently. “That day on the bench, your eyes told me to wait for you. So I walked away, everything in me wanting to sit myself back down on the bench with you. But I walked away because your eyes told me to wait.”

This is the perfect moment, a fairy tale. This is my love.

But then comes the doubts. “You’ve known her for less than a minute,” I can hear Wuri saying. “Protect yourself, don’t get your hopes up.” “You’re too shy and eccentric for her,” Lacky will tell me. And Sayid, sad Sayid, looks at me in my mind, and suddenly this sadness I’ve managed to push down rushes up to the surface.

What is wrong with me? Why do I have to ruin things in a perfect moment? Just when I think my mind is going to burst, the pantry door bursts open instead, and out come all of the guests, a mad unintelligible roar following them. Wuri’s red flashing clock is in full force. They all crowd around me, whispering in my ear so she can’t hear them. “C’mon man, what are you doing? You’ve known her for less than a minute. Protect yourself, don’t get your hopes up,” Wuri whispers. “You’re too shy and eccentric for her,” Lacky says, shy even in his whisper. And Sayid, well, Sayid doesn’t need to say anything, I just look at him and I’m sad.

Suddenly I feel dizzy. I look at her with fear in my eyes, wanting these uninvited guests to not be here, wanting us to pretend they never burst out of the pantry, that I never knew them. I try to ignore them, not introducing the guests to her. I want us to go on with our perfect moment.

But the perfect moment is perfectly gone. She looks at me with sad, knowing eyes, and starts to leave. I look outside and suddenly see the yellow and striped butterflies flying together again in a sharp wind. I notice the striped one getting blown off course by the wind, frantically beating its tiny wings to stay where he is, next to the yellow one. I see him fighting and fighting.

“Why is life so hard sometimes?,” I wonder. Why is it so hard to stay on course, where we’ve planned, where we should be? I fight and fight every single day, against this wind, and I’m so tired at the end of my days, especially those days where the wind blows extra hard.

Then I look outside again. At first I don’t quite understand what I’m seeing. The two butterflies are flying together, effortlessly, big beautiful wings floating on the warm wind. Then I understand.

They changed directions. In fact, they’re flying with the wind. It’s like they realized that maybe wherever they were headed wasn’t the only way, that maybe the other direction also held the delicious nectar that sustains them.

And so I decide. I decide because we can’t control a whole lot of things in our lives, but we can at least decide, set our intentions. I decide and I speak up before she walks out of my life again. I wasn’t ready on the whispering bench, as much as everything in me wanted to be ready. Maybe I’m not ready in this moment either, but when will we ever be fully ready?

“I want you to meet some friends of mine,” I say. And before I can explain anything, explain their strange behavior, she gives each of them a huge bear hug.

It’s incredible to watch the effect of her affectionate hug. Lacky looks like he’s finally not lacking anything, standing up straight and tall, no longer searching for treasure. Sayid has this wonderful smiling twinkle in his eyes, which lights up a face which seemed forever dulled and gray. And Wuri’s clock, I noticed, has stopped on the time 6:18. Why does that time seem so familiar?

I’m on the Whispering Bench. It’s golden hour, that hour before sunset where everything is
bathed in a godly fading light, where everything looks somehow more beautiful, more magnified.
I look down at my watch. 6:18. A girl in all yellow sits down next to me.

My God. The exact same minute in which I met her the first time. I look around and realize my mysterious rowdy guests have mysteriously disappeared, leaving us in peace. “Did you know,” I tell her, “That Wuri’s clock stopped on the same minute we met each other?”

“It makes sense,” she says. “14 years have passed, and we’re both a little older, we’ve both seen the world a little more. But this moment is just the same as that one 14 years ago. I loved you then, and I love you now. You can put a time on some things, but not love. What is time to a river, who flows endlessly, one part feeding the next until it empties into the vast ocean?”

“I’ve been trying to remember something all day,” I tell her. “All day, these strange coincidences with my guests, these forgotten memories I didn’t realize I had. All this time, I was looking at them as different, removed, not a part of me. They had all these flaws. I didn’t want to associate with them.

And then I understand. I understand why I saw something familiar in Lacky's lack of self-confidence, why Wuri's violin story affected me so much, why I wanted to slam the door in Sayid's face. Why we knew all the same quotes.

I am them. They are me.

As much I didn’t want to admit it for a long time, every one of those guests is me, is one of my dark, hidden fears. Maybe they are misdirected, maybe they are confused aspects of me, but they are still a part of me. I can try to shut them in the dark pantry but they will come out, and when they do, they’ll come with force. I can reinforce my front door but they'll knock and knock until I have to answer, or even worse, they'll find a side-door and occupy my life without me even being aware.

And when she hugged them with that love she has, when she showed them love without judging them like they’re used to me judging them, they realized who they really were. They realized their names weren’t Wuri, Lacky and Sayid. They were named Compassion, Joy and Love at birth, but they lost their birth certificates in this crazy rough and tumble world, and they took on new names just to survive. What else could they do? They didn’t know any better.

I share all of these epiphanies with her.

“They just needed a reminder,” she says.

I remember this quote that I read a long time ago in a college class. At the time it struck me but I didn’t quite understand why:

         “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were
    necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line
    dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing
    to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Destroy my own heart. Isn't this what I do, every time I curse myself, curse my "flaws" and "fears?" Don't I destroy my own heart when I don't love every single part of me?

I don't want to destroy my own heart. I want to be whole. I make that decision now, every single day of my life. We can't control everything in our life, but we can at least decide, at least set our intention. And that's the intention I want to set.

So if you see Wuri, Lacky, Sayid or any of my other guests out in the world, please, go easy on them. They're just parts of me, after all, lost parts of me who you need to be shown a little bit of love to remember exactly who they are. To remember that which is truly holy in them.

And if you happen to be sitting at home one day, on a day like any other day, and you hear a strange knock on the door, think about inviting that person in for a tea.

It might just be a long lost part of yourself disguised as a stranger.