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The Hugs of Suffering |
| Written by John Wells | |
| Thursday, 13 March 2008 | |
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Share it:      It was shortly after 6:00 p.m. on a cold December evening. He was in the kitchen with his Latin roommate helping her prepare the dinner for her and her husband. He often liked to spend this period of the day with her. He loved her. He was telling her about his events at work that day. He was physically tired, mentally weary, and emotionally confused. He knew that she could not be the person he wanted her to be, but there was a part of her he found he could appeal to; it was a part of her heart. He liked to stand by the side of the stove and help her make the Mexican hot chocolate in the big ceramic pot. He liked her in every way regardless of what she said, how she dressed, or what she did. It was all-acceptable to him. Maybe his attitude about her was a prerequisite for love. To say it better, he could not find anything about her to hate. But enough about his feelings for her. They shall be revealed in a more splendid manner as the story unfolds. What should be emphasized here is his state of being. He was suffering and he was trying most subtly to reveal this to her that she might know intuitively. He was saying ‘goodbye’, goodbye to his current manner of employment he held for over twenty years, and goodbye to the many people whom he had consistently served. During the afternoon of that day, he had received hugs from four women, and for the life of him, he could not make any sense of it. And he wanted to. He wanted to really know if this behavior was of any benefit to all parties involved, or if this was some type of learned reflexive expression. He could not find the value in it. He began speaking to his roommate about this very issue. He said, “today, I received hugs from four women, and I really did not feel anything. To me, they were lifeless. The only hug that stood out from the others came from the youngest of the women whom I had known for the shortest period of time. She was the only one whom seemed to put her heart into it, and yet, we hardly knew each other.” The Latin roommate nodded her head in an understanding manner and replied, “I know how that is. You have to remember that you are different. You have an enormous amount of freedom before you. You have money, so you don’t have to work. You can travel or you can do nothing. If I had such opportunities as you, I would explore the island we live on. I would love to travel, but I have to work.” She had her own dreams, and for him, this was obvious. He believed she had exercised premature judgment in hastily surrendering her heart to a man she loved, but her choice had been made, and she would honor the marriage until death took the one or both. Such was her class. It was also obvious that she was more absorbed in the preparations for the dinner with her husband. Thus his efforts in getting all of her attention, he knew, could not be achieved at this time. Nevertheless, he wanted to know of some of those special qualities she possessed, those attributes which made him see her as a real, genuine, feeling woman. He spoke little to her through the course of the dinner preparations, but often times, he wanted to say to her: “Do you know the suffering I am going through? Do you know how mixed up my emotions are?” And being the woman that she is, she did know. He could feel her compassion for him in the tone of her voice, in her gentle body movements, in her facial expressions, and more obscurely, in the warmth of her aura. He also knew that what she gave him with her soul could not be her everything. This was a common knowledge he had learned to live with. Two days had passed since his time of affliction. He was alone in his room still meditating upon the events of that day. His state of perplexity was lessening. He was beginning to employ more of his reasoning powers to arrive at an answer, a conclusion. He asked himself, “Is it the woman? Is it her heart? Is it her circumstances? Is this why I did not feel their love, their life, their being? Why did I only feel something genuine with that one young woman?” What was this young woman saying to him with her body and her heart that the other women would not or could not express? Did she understand him better? Did she know him more? He would want to go back there. He would want to see her and tell her. He would want to believe that they knew each other's hearts more than any other people they had ever had contact with. Imagine if just for one time in his life, he was right about her. Copyright 2008 John Wells |
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