It only takes one…

https://www.turnto23.com/news/crime/greyhound-bus-shooter-contemplated-trying-to-make-police-shoot-him-court-documents-show

This gentlemen was desperate. He was desperate in a way I know all too well. I needed somebody, anybody. I can hear those pleads for help as if I were there. I hear those pleas because far too many times I have screamed those same pleas.

I don’t think I could count, I can’t even keep track of all the times it took one word, one smile, one gesture of good will to turn me around from that dark road this soul tortured soul was on. I think the latest was while doing laundry. I was beyond emotional, trying to find that strength to keep alive, and I held the door for a young man. He was a recent immigrant, he was eager to show is appreciation. He hadn’t had the time to learn English, I never took the time to learn Spanish, but after starting his wash, he offered to get me something while he got something a the corner market. I said I was good, but I was terribly thirsty but didn’t have the energy to communicate anything resembling a desire, much less deal with a decision of what. He went off, and brought back an Arizona tea for me. Not only that, but he randomly got a flavor I had been curios about. It was really good. I my bodily thirst and emotional thirst were quenched. That young man will never know what that drink meant for me, but at that moment, that drink saved my world.

I truly wish I were there, again. I understand that need for just one. So I smile. It hurts so goddamn much to smile, but I smile. I acknowledge. Sometimes that smile, that acknowledgment that they exist is all it takes. Sometimes it takes more. Sometimes it means opening the ears on your heart. Not listening through judgment, because it is you you are judging, but listening through your own story. Their stories are your stories. What they did, you could, should, would, or have done.

A “hi’, a smile, an ear when there is nothing else to hear-

It only takes one.

It never takes none.

What this person did was horrible. So was the willful blindness of countless of humans. He was begging, begging, and begging. There is only so much begging you can handle.

It only takes one, it never takes two.

It only takes one.

Duckin’ Kev

“There is never time to do it right, but there is always time to do it over.”
– Letho’s Law
I may have heard this before, but I know I have a degree in this philosophy. I’ve learned to re-phrase this as, “The first time is practice and lessons of, “I’ve got to start thinking these things through”, Cali of the British show “Mongrels”.