The Best Thing That Happened

Dear Diary:

It’s Sunday. I’m up early. I skim the paper and then blast over to the gym. I hurry downtown to buy a pair of shorts, then speed to return my car to a parking lot near Yankee Stadium.

Back to the Upper West Side to inhale dinner. Off again, this time to catch the subway at West 79th Street to the Buddhist zendo where I meditate.

At the top of the steps to the platform, I look down and see an older man at the bottom struggling to push a wire wicker shopping basket with two back wheels up the first step. There is an oxygen tank resting on a pillow in the basket. Two plastic tubes attached to a nasal cannula hang loosely near his nostrils.

“No!” I say to myself. “I have to get to meditation!”

When I am alongside the man, though, the words “Can I help you?” are out of my mouth before I can pull them back.

Exhausted, he looks up.

“Yes, please,” he says.

Slowly, I lift the front of the basket to the next step. Then the next. Then the next. The man has to stop to rest at each one.

It takes maybe two minutes to reach the top — two minutes for the Mad Hatter occupying my soul to be utterly transformed. The atoms of my body have rearranged themselves into something still and quiet.

“This is the best thing that has happened to me today,” the man says.

No, I think, it’s the best thing that’s happened to me.