One time in Peru, I talked with an old man.
He was walking through the city as one of his cross-country stops, pushing some kind of cart in an effort to raise some kind of awareness. What he was doing and where he was going isn’t that important, but what he said has kind of stuck with me.
I interviewed him because, well, that sort of thing doesn’t happen too often in a sleepy little town of around 10,000 in North Central Indiana. He had a loose fitting white and hi-liter yellow long-sleeve shirt on, with a hat that was all floppy on every part but the front so as to keep the sun from digging into his flimsy, balloon-thin skin.
He had deep wrinkles lined across his face, showing his age but his youth still shone through, though mostly in his demeanor. He wanted to live. He wanted to see things. He wanted to experience everything that he possibly could. And actually, I think he was raising awareness precisely for that: to get more seniors out and about doing things and not just live waiting to die.
The only part of the interview I can remember was asking him something like, you must have had a lot of important moments in your life, can you tell me what one of those was?
And he looked straight into my eyes and said:
-This is the most important moment of my life.
I was taken for a second. Sorry, can you explain that?
He said he didn’t like to dwell on past memories, and while he did enjoy remembering happy ones, those didn’t define him. He, instead, tried to keep pushing forward to savor each moment that came to him as the most important one he could ever possibly have.
In other words, live for the moment. And make it count.
Even if that moment was an interview with a young reporter in a nowhere town – my words, not his.
My coworkers overheard that line and kind of sneered at it. No surprise they could hear it since I was interviewing the old man at my desk just a few feet away from them. That wasn’t the norm for interviews, but for some reason it was necessary that day. And it was, for the next few weeks, a recurring joke in the newsroom.
I’d get asked a question and say I don’t know, what? and the punchline was always something about how that moment was the most important one. I’d laugh and be all like, yeah, wow what a guy huh? But I never told them that it really stuck with me. It jammed itself neatly into a brainfold and sat there for those years since. I’m not saying that it’s Confucius levels of wisdom, but I also don’t think it was the ramblings of an old man who spent too much time in the sun.
I didn’t know, and still don’t know, if that kind of thinking is the right kind. If the moment you’re in isn’t the most important one in your life, should it be? Should you try to make it that way? Or are unimportant moments in life just as, uh, important, for lack of a better term? But if everything is important, is nothing?
Maybe it’s kind of like Christmas. Oh my jeez do I love Christmas. Everything about it. The bright lights, the jingly bells, the absolutely serene dead silence of snowfall and the ensuing crunch as you go out to stomp around in all that good good white stuff. And then you get to see everyone, everywhere you go, in a cheery happy mood even if they’re faking it. Especially if they’re faking it. But sometimes they’re sincere when they wish you a happy holiday. And then you’ve got the cookies and all the – oh, I could continue.
But while Christmas is a blast, it would be meaningless if it happened every day. And so, as a result, there’s around 330 days of ho-hum whatevers of trying to have a good enough time and 30 some days of awwww yes it’s Christmastime.
And maybe that old man was taking the idea of why can’t every day be the same feeling of awwww yes it’s Christmastime? Is that even possible? More importantly, is it healthy?
I’ve got no idea, but it’s fun to think about.
Anyway, we’re about two months into the lifetime of this website and seventh content drop is coming up. I’m wildly excited for the next Storygank. It fits precisely into the kind of format that series is. It’s easily the most deserving of such a story, and how it didn’t hit me right away, I’ll never know. It’s going to take some effort and I’m going to have to pause and take some notes, kind of like what I did for Persona, but I’ll enjoy every moment of it.
Huh, kind of like I did for Persona.
The next Adventure isn’t nearly as firm though. I’ve got it narrowed down to three potential ones, and while the stories are there, I’m not so sure the photos are. And I’m not so sure if that’s as important as the words are, but it’s still good to have them.
Hey, did you know that in the newspaper business, it isn’t called photographs or pictures or anything like that when it comes to putting graphics onto the printed thing? It’s called art. And I just about typed that I was lacking art for the Adventure, but that wouldn’t have made any sense to you, I’m sure. It didn’t make any sense to me at first. It still kind of doesn’t. And it didn’t make any sense to sources when you’d call and ask if they had any art opportunities for tomorrow’s front page.
-Uh yeah, the YMCA has an art class but I don’t think it meets today.
-Nononono, not that kind of art. Like a picture for tomorrow’s newspaper.
-Oh, well why didn’t you just say that?
-I have no idea.
At that point you’d place your hand over the receiver and shout at the editor, hey why do we call it that and he’d shout back:
-I have no idea.
Those phone calls were made pretty often, you know. But the day-to-day experience of working in a newsroom was fun. It was everything a person like me wanted. I don’t care much for rigidity and routine. Not that I don’t like having a plan from time to time, but walking into the office every single morning and not having any idea of who I was going to get to talk with that day was exciting.
I mean, yeah, you’d usually have a few interviews lined up because you’d try to plan the week out as best you could. You’d read the schedules of the schools, the local libraries and see what events were coming up, but sometimes you’d just have a story fall into your lap. And those were the best. Those were exciting.
Sometimes it was a crime or a big event that some company had planned weeks in advance and forgot to notify the newspaper about until 15 minutes before it started and could we make it? We always could.
But sometimes those unexpected stories was just an old man pushing a cart through your city.
Thanks for reading.