I’ve been carrying this tiny, true story with me for a bit. Obviously, given current circumstances, this didn’t happen today, but the telling feels nicer if I pretend it did.
I had lunch today with an unexpected mentor.
It was at a cheap, disarmingly shitty restaurant near the station. The kind of place you’d imagine health inspectors love to harass. Cracked, grey tiles that must once have been white. No piece of decor quite straight or whole.
I go there to grow. I’m uneasy around people, and this place is so small that you often have to share a dirty table with someone. It makes me uncomfortable, and being uncomfortable is a necessity for growth.
On this occasion, I asked a guy who looked as worn out as the restaurant if I could share his table, and he warmly welcomed me. I judged him quickly. He looked broken by life. I assumed that he’d begged a free meal from the restaurant owner, and despite her relentlessly hard, mercenary demeanour, she must have acquiesed. Turns out I was wrong. This guy was wealthy, but he didn’t tell me straight away.
Instead, after we’d shared a meal in silence, he let me know I was in for a lecture. I braced myself. “My life has completely turned around since I found Jesus.” Yeah, here we go. I wondered how much religion could really have done for this guy, given how downtrodden he looked. I wondered how he could think someone was looking out for him when he’d clearly been dealt such a rough hand. Or so I thought.
I was wrong again. He didn’t push the point. He didn’t try to sell his religion to me. Instead, he shared a story about an incredible stroke of luck he’d had in recent years.
He’d been so sick that he’d been in hospital for nine months. During that time, he’d had free food and accommodation, but had still been receiving a pension. So now he was rich. He was so rich that once a week, he could afford to leave the hostel he lived in and go out for lunch, and then go and have a game of chess at another hostel. He said that not everyone was so lucky to be able to do that. He said that sometimes people got upset when he beat them at chess, but it didn’t get him down, because he was leading such a rich life now.
He was absolutely genuine. He was overflowing with gratitude for this months long illness that had transformed his fortunes. He told me that he’d spent a lifetime battling mental illness and all manner of related setbacks, and now for the first time, he was stable and happy, and mentally healthy.
I absorbed something powerful and mysterious from this guy. I judged him quickly. I saw the facts, but I interpreted them incorrectly. He was dirt poor and broken by life. But he didn’t see it that way at all. He was, by his account, suddenly leading a life that he’d never thought possible. He was free of mental illness, and a free agent in the world, with his own means.
I won’t spell out the lesson that I learnt from this. I’m not sure I could boil it down, even if I wanted to, because it wasn’t as simplistic as: be slow to judge, or: be grateful for what you have. Growth is like that. It happens even if you don’t notice or fully understand it.