I was walking through Smith’s, basically Utah’s version of Kroger, today when I saw a man who was probably somewhere in his mid-60s.
Big guy wearing a black T-shirt with huge white lettering.
And on the front of the shirt, in very large letters, it said:
“Well, it isn’t going to suck itself.”
Underneath those words was a giant arrow pointing straight down.
Yes.
Exactly where you think it was pointing.
I swear to God.
For about three seconds, my brain completely stopped working.
I didn’t know whether to laugh, look away, or find the nearest employee and ask which aisle contained industrial-strength eye bleach.
But then something happened.
I looked at him again.
Not at the shirt.
At him.
And suddenly I had this strange thought.
I know absolutely nothing about this man.
Nothing.
I don’t know if somebody loves him.
I don’t know if somebody used to love him.
I don’t know if he goes home every night to a wife he has been married to for 40 years, or to an empty house where nobody is waiting.
I don’t know if he has children who call him every Sunday.
Or children who haven’t spoken to him in ten years.
I don’t know if he has grandchildren.
I don’t know if he has cancer.
I don’t know if he buried his best friend last year.
I don’t know if he wakes up every morning excited to be alive or if getting out of bed has become the hardest part of his day.
All I knew about him was one stupid fucking T-shirt.
And yet for a few seconds, my brain had created an entire person from it.
We do this all day long.
We see the angry guy in traffic.
The woman holding up the line.
The rude waiter.
The neighbor who never waves.
The person wearing something ridiculous in Smith’s.
And almost instantly, we decide who they are.
But we don’t know.
We almost never know.
Every single person you pass today is carrying a story you cannot see.
Some of those stories are beautiful.
Some are painful.
Some are probably almost unbearable.
And maybe that person doesn’t need us to understand their entire story.
Maybe they just need us not to make it worse.
That man will probably never know I saw him today.
He’ll never know that his completely inappropriate T-shirt somehow made me think about kindness, loneliness, loss, judgment and what it means to be human.
And I certainly never expected to walk into Smith’s and come out thinking about any of this.
But here’s what I’m going to try to remember.
The next time somebody irritates me, confuses me, looks different from me, acts strangely, or wears one of the most spectacularly inappropriate shirts I have ever seen in my life…
I’m going to try to remember that I am seeing about one-millionth of their story.
And before I decide who they are…
Maybe I should leave a little room for the other 999,999 parts I cannot see.
Because someday somebody is going to see me on one of my worst days.
And I hope they leave a little room for my story too.
Dr. Dave
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