19. Brief Encounters.

Little walks help to keep me sane. I put on an outfit I like the feel of, wear a scent I’ll appreciate whenever the wind blows just so, put on a favourite podcast (Tolu Agbelusi’s Unlearning Strongwoman) or a good playlist (this one), grab a book just in case (The Coin by Yasmin Zaher), and go wherever my legs take me. These were yesterday’s choices.

I took a route past the river, browsed the book shelves of nearby charity shops, stopped for a matcha latte (I know, I know…) before unexpectedly bumping into an old lecturer from my undergraduate degree. For some reason I’ve found myself reflecting on this interaction so this post is, essentially, me thinking out loud. Keep reading if you’re curious to know where I land because even I’m not entirely sure where that might be!

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Decisions

It’s funny how the very separate decisions he (said lecturer) and I made yesterday led to us walking in opposite directions- up and down the same hill, perfectly timed to bump right into each other. Typically, whenever we unexpectedly encounter people from our pasts there is always a moment - an unspoken exchange in which you decide the extent to which you care to acknowledge one another. In that moment, there was a split-second mutual decision to stop and turn what might have been a passing smile and brief hello into a side-step off the main path and into a conversation.

Encounters

As a lecturer, he was passionate about his subject area, energetic and entertaining. He taught the subjects I was most interested in and he taught them well. Those years are further and further behind me but, when I do think of them, I remember him fondly.

The last time I saw him was during the hazy few months after my mum died and I hadn’t quite landed anywhere. We crossed paths in a bookshop (very on brand); he told me he’d retired and, understandably, seemed rather pleased about it. I told him my mum had recently died and circumstances meant I found myself back in the city my career path had taken me away from.

I remember his facial expression then- full of sadness and sympathy- but I was surprised to see it again yesterday when he brought up the fact of this significant loss, entirely unprompted. Two years later he both remembered and acknowledged and the simple fact of this made me want to both smile and cry.

Then, at the point in an unexpected encounter when you’re wondering whether to delve deeper into the other person’s life or part ways, his phone rang. I found myself wondering whether this was the point at which I should leave him to it but he answered the unspoken question and gestured for me to wait. And so I did, and after a brief interlude our conversation continued for a little while longer until we neatly parted ways.

Connections

In that relatively brief conversation I learned about his interests, hobbies and post-retirement preoccupations, and when he asked how I was getting on (as those who have taught us are wont to do), I found myself expressing something that sometimes seems unutterable when you’ve chosen a vocational path, especially one that affords you the opportunity to help people, especially to someone who’d climbed the ladder and stayed the course: I don’t really know which direction I’m going in, at some point I stopped enjoying the journey, and I’m no longer as certain as I once was that this path is for me.

He was perfectly understanding and said some words that made quite a lot of sense and, as I walked away, it occurred to me that if, in that split-second, we had both made different decisions, this rather pleasant conversation might not have happened, or it could have been an entirely awkward, pointless interaction and that would have been a shame.

For various reasons I’ve found myself thinking a lot lately about these invisible, often imagined boundaries we create between ourselves and pondering the ways we might decidedly (and respectfully) leap over them in order to create and sustain meaningful connections and relationships- whether those connections last the length of a conversation or the rest of our lives.

This preoccupation is, in part, tied up with my experience of grief and navigating significant life changes, and how these things impact our relationships with others. It also has to do with the fact that the list of people- family, friends, potential friends- that I really would love to sit and spend time with only seems to get longer but time itself seems to be moving faster than I can keep up with.

It also has so much to do with the reality of watching multiple genocides unfold in real-time, the undeniable reality of how little our lives actually matter to the world’s most powerful (and their lackeys); how, in response, fervent calls for solidarity, mutual aid, and care have gotten louder; how so many more people are expressing a genuine desire to create lasting change at a societal level, but also how impossible all of that actually is if we don’t dare to engage in vital conversations, to risk refusal or rejection, to share the thoughts that mean something to us and not just the ones that feel safe, to inconvenience and be inconvenienced, to make use of the technology at our disposal but also step out from behind our screens and into the world we’re all attempting to exist in.

Political activist, Assata Shakur, whose autobiography is one of my favourite books, wrote:

“…If I know anything at all

it’s that a wall is just a wall

and nothing more at all.

It can be broken down.”

But how can we be in the business of breaking down walls when our own are built so high?

She also wrote that ‘revolution is about change, and the first place the change begins is in yourself.’

As always, a reminder to myself, first and foremost, that opportunities for meaningful encounters- brief or otherwise- can, and need to be, created and that the very quality of our lives actually depends on our willingness to do so.

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Rather shockingly, it has been over three months since my last post, however, this one has actually taken the place of the long overdue catch up I was in the middle of writing so that letter shouldn’t be too far behind this one…

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Until next time,

Tasnim