Meditations at the Metro Stop

22 Sept. 2024

Somewhere along the Green Line, I sat on the station bench waiting for the nighttime trolley car. I wanted to get going, but it just wouldn’t arrive.

The platform lights were uncomfortably bright, betraying me to the world. Horrifyingly, I was seen. Worse yet, I could see others. I tried to avoid looking too much at the Scary Man, who stood hunched, hovered and restless, cracked nose ruby red, dandruff on him like baking soda, muttering harshly and emerging from the grippy fog of synthetic opiates. Mostly, I just didn’t want him to talk to me.

But on the other side was a figure more terrifying, that I would rather go clap the Scary Man on his back, take him on a walk and ask him, “so, ah, how’s your relationship with your parents, fella,” anything to avoid meeting the leering gaze of the Professional Woman, who stood in bright clean shoes, with a lanyard from a pharmaceutical corporation on an elegant green knit sweater. Someone who dispensed validation like wages, and would probably ask me what I do, a complicated question, and I would have to bear her concerned frown when I told her I was ‘funemployed’.

Faced with these twin devils, of two worlds that I found equally off-putting, I made like a tongue and retreated into my head. Not unproductively, mind you, because I was gnawing on a pearl-of-a-thought dropped heavy in my lap, three days hence, from the pages of Tricycle, the Buddhist Review magazine, on the nature of suffering. Suffering, the Buddhists will tell you, is inevitable in life, as natural and unavoidable as the wait between arrival of metro cars…

Being a mid-functioning basket of anxieties myself, I was no stranger to suffering. Me and Anxiety go way back, him and I, my constant companion and most dependably present sensation. Anxiety comes on like a reliable advisor, with a pinch on the arm and a tap to the shoulder saying, “howdy, old boy, just thought you should know that you come off as half-demonic and half-effete (and half-muliebral on top for good measure), and it’s nothing personal, not at all, friend, just you should know.” And I’d reel back and need to set that straight, and clap back to this slander saying, “listen here, Anxiety, I’m good as I am, and I’m not demonic or muliebral, and I don’t have any affect, and in any case I don’t care, so shut up!”

Suffering occurs quite simply, says Tricycle, because I want life to be different than it is. I want to be happy, but I’m not. I want my grandmother to be healthy, but she’s not. I want a gaggle of friends I haven’t got. I want to be young, but another birthday’s coming up.

The Buddhists shrug, “that’s life! Ha ha,” I can hear them, “life doesn’t suit the ego? Well, isn’t that just the thing…” But in steps Anxiety, “hear that, old boy? Turns out life is suffering, and you’ll never be happy again. Shame that and all. Ipso facto, chum, there’s one way out, naturally. Odds are you won’t like it, but hey— you don’t want to go on suffering now?” (Shut up, shut up!)

I went back mulling that heavy pearl dropped on me by the wisdom of the Buddhist Review, twisting and turning it, an opaque sense there was something there I couldn’t quite make out. Because, damn, life isn’t suffering, right— suffering is reaction to life not being how I want it. Ah, good stuff— but I’m interrupted in these thoughts because the Scary Man got tired of lurching and sat down next to me on the bench, and Lord, he smells like sweat and detritus, which makes it hard to think…

Anxiety: “eh, pardon me, old boy, it’s rude to scoot away, but say, you don’t think he’s coming on to you a little…?” Damn you, Anxiety, you really are good for nothing, fleeting thoughts and all, can’t you say something pleasant for once, and— oh.

There it was, I suppose, under the too-bright lights and summer nighttime heat, when the pearl of wisdom opened up and I realized, I’m causing my own suffering here, by arguing with old Anxiety, trying to out-think it just like always, out-rationalize it, engage it. I talk back to Anxiety and the heat just grows and I get all bent out of shape. If I try to fight Anxiety, Anxiety wins. Anxiety is life I struggle against it.

Well, I considered cautiously, what if I just didn’t fight it? Then what would happen?

“Well then, old boy,” Anxiety says, “seems like all your worst fears come true now. Yer keeping ‘em at bay, and you want to give up your one defense: worrying? Won’t end well…”

So I didn’t fight it. I didn’t argue back.

“To each their own,” Anxiety said, and fluttered away.

I sat relaxed, so suddenly calm that I hadn’t known breathing could be so nice and deep. I happily kept not fighting, and my fearsome woes melted away into rather nice cool breezes, trivial little things.

Scary Man was humming a comforting song to himself, and Professional Woman was happy to be heading home, and I didn’t mind sitting here with either of them.

The trolley arrived with a salutary bell, dinging along merrily, and us three strangers marched aboard to be carried together on our separate ways.

Liam CZA Noble

Somerville, 2024