How meek I really am

At 10:00:30 I had apparently missed the boat by a few strides, for the bus was just gliding out as I stepped up to the gate. Confused by a queue waiting for a different bus in the same port, I stammered and hesitated chasing after it, missing my chance to arrive at home almost an hour earlier, as the next bus was not due until 10:45.

I almost fell into the pit of disappointment, as I looked down at what initially seemed like a long wait after a rather long day.

But then, as I sat down upon the refreshing cold tile floor, resigned to write and read my way through time, I realized how petty my feelings truly were.

I’d just begun to read Ernest Shackleton’s South, and so when I reflected upon my minor imposition and compared it to the catastrophe of the crew of the Endurance, which endured two years of waiting to escape the South Pole, my frivolous sentiments of inconvenience quickly dispersed.

For waiting 17,472 hours is quite worse. Moreover, after surviving the isolation, the artic winter, the loneliness and depression and the utter hopelessness; to finally arrive home and be called a failure; and then to be thrown into war, only to immediately perish after completing a super human feat, that is a far worse fate than mine.

Realizing this, I knew that sighing and hemming and stewing over a mere 45-minute wait would only show how spoiled and complacent and meek I really am.

in the beginning .00 daily archives

l.m