I was gettin' my ride safety inspected the other day, in a rather hoity-toity neighborhood, and when you get your car safety inspected, the policy 'round here is 'first come, first served' and so you hope for the best but always find yourself in some sort of que, which I did.
Safety inspections take a mechanic time to complete, and there are certain steps to the process, so everybody in the que is ready with their paperwork and are oh so nice to the mechanic. He's busy so they can't get much of a word in with him, he's only available to ask or tell you things like "I need your paperwork", "Where are the keys?", "I need twenty six dollars for the fee", "It's ready" and stuff like that 'cuz he has to move on to the next car.
Which leaves everybody in the que kinda hangin' around in an uncomfortable situation. They can't leave the building or line that they're in and so inevitably, conversation starts to be passed around. I was busy writing Thought Of The Day on my little portable device so I wasn't participating but I could hear what was being said.
This being a neighborhood full of older retired people, most of the people in the que were of that demographic but there was a younger woman, looked like a local restaurant worker, there as well.
For this cruise you get a one way ticket
Peter Hansen- Unsplash.com
The older people were throwing out conversational gambits, which were being lobbed back by others, and what I picked up from that was that they were mainly offering up things about their lives, about what they'd done, and seeing if that garnered any interest.
It was, but very little, for the others were doing the same and the overall vibe was that whatever they had done was done and The World was moving on and "So what?". This left the conversations having a sort of pained and wistful air, which I interpreted as extraordinarily sad, for I could sense in the old people that not only whatever they had done was over with but that they had also attributed a bit of meaning to it. But this meaning applied only to them, for the others did not see much value in what they had done.
Ouch!
I guess this was because they all knew they were in the same boat, I suppose, one that was sailing away from The World and the multitudinous goings on within it. As the shore of the Land Of Meaningful slowly receded from view, they were left with the harsh reality that the vast open Sea Of Nothingness lay ahead, which only served to remind them that there might not ever have been much meaning to what they had done.
Which is something that they had only gotten lately, after retirement, after the long story of their lives had unfolded, lives that at the time seemed so full of portent- but alas, only to them.
Some of them looked like children do when they've just lost a puppy and others looked like they were trying to find some meaning in Today but, not really being participants in The World much anymore, and being seen by the young people as elderly, over the hill, out of the loop (or my favorite- as 'strange uncles' or 'weird aunts'), could only hope to try and find meaning with others of their age. Though they looked to be well off in the material goods department, they suffered varying degrees of spiritual poverty, for the bewildered gaze some of them exhibited lent credence to the fact that they were not talking with others so much but into the air, just to fill the silence.
I certainly wasn't being any help by seeming to ignore them, but I did after a while toss a few conversational bits into the mix here and there, in order to bolster individual senses of relevance.
When my car got done and I drove away from there the experience stuck with me as something to ponder from time to time as I was again immersed in the busyness of the world, where things seem to have so much meaning. Do they? When you're dealing with things like meeting goals, relationship issues, finances, and the like your days can be filled with high levels of excitement and drama but some day you're gonna be old and 'talking story' with other old people, 'cuz they'll probably be the only ones around, and if what I experienced at the mechanic's shop is any indication those people aren't going to want to listen so much.
Because whatever 'it' was, it happened in the past.