The Hearing

People walk by in their lives, in their well-worn shoes, looking at the world through different eyes than mine. I wonder what that must be like. I try hard to be empathetic, but all I get is a tension headache, splitting my brain not quite along the center. I am not someone else, I guess. So I don't try as hard. I don't wish to be them anymore. I just watch through my own eyes and listen through my own ears.

Exhibit A:
The four at the table below me have been friends for varying lengths of time. Tammy and Glenn both had crushes on the same guy in high school. That was five years ago. Jessica only started dating Annie in February. In between, there have been rehearsals and recitals, study groups and chats over coffee like this one. They all brought their books today, but they never managed to make it to the table.

Make that tableS (plural). Joe Bar is a tiny coffeehouse off the corner of Cornish College of the Arts that distinguishes itself with a decidedly French atmosphere that includes a menu of crepes and miniscule cafe tables scattered across the three small rooms it occupies. Glenn & the Girls had to push two together to make room for all their... conversation. It's not that books were the last thing on their minds. The tabletop was covered with topics ranging from classmate gossip to playwrights, breathing methods to personality theory. The content of their speech was equal parts opinion and fact, when, in fact, their opinions often clashed with the known universe. O, if they had only consulted the text in their backpacks!

But - honestly - where's the fun in being right? I admire the courage to be wrong. To believe that, I must then be one of the most courageous men alive never to have broken a bone. I am glad I am not smart enough to be right all the time. I used to be okay with that. Then I became the kind of adult who forgot what it was like to be smart enough to be wrong once in a while. Maybe I had a better answer. A more creative answer. But I kept it to myself and made the "right" choices. When I made my last, really bad right choice, I was left bankrupt - emotionally, spiritually and financially bankrupt - and I found myself looking over the dead body of that poor "correct" soul who turned into his 30s before he was ready. Looking back at me was the pimply, doughy teenager who could very likely have been the next to join Glenn & his Girls for coffee. I had opinions then. I would have shared them all. They would have spilled off the cafe tables and stained the cement floor with the blood of dead poets and the fathers of psychoanalysis. Cyrano was my hero. Orion was my protector. Jung was my mentor. Hitchcock was my muse. And I had two Hepburns as lovers. My life was a rich out-of-body experience and I have been trying to reclaim that experience lately.

I can't do that by being right all the time. Quoting statistics and facts is a waste of my time. The future of my success and the life of that young man I found living beneath the tension headaches deals in reading dreams and wishes, and letting other people share theirs with me without me having to walk in their ill-fitting, well-worn shoes. My eyes and ears work just fine. I would like to try living my own life with people like Glenn & the Girls and their parents and professors around to keep things moving on the sidewalk outside this great little coffeehouse with the French accent.