Soaking In It

I like taking late, quiet lunches at work. If I go at the tail end of serving time, I can sit and read in a decent silence. I’m not anti-social per se, but do enjoy my own quiet space wherever I can get it. At home I am usually in the vocal company of my beloved mate or my Humanling. After hearing everything they are saying at times, my head is full of other people’s thoughts, perceptions, news, concerns and current events. I find that I no longer have creative space in my head at that time. I only have room for the very next Have To Do or Think About. All of it practical.

Space is good for the opportunity for all of the Other’s mind confetti to filter nicely down into my being and disperse where it needs to be filed, like a drain. Only then can I start to have the room for my mind to stretch and breathe, then figure out what it is that I am made of. What I default to in thought and how my mind likes to browse as compared to just taking in constant stimuli that belong to others.

I set my tray down at work a few days ago to have that mind yoga for a small piece of time. I noticed that I read voraciously. I ate slowly. My fork actually went down between bites and I wasn’t eating like a rushed mom.

I read my Dharma Road book for a bit, at one point laughing gratuitously out loud for probably a margin too long for conventional taste those who might be around a solo table guest who is laughing. Eventually I looked up and saw there was another small table in front of me with just one person. A girl who I don’t know was also having lunch alone. It seemed a little different than my experience. She ate quickly, sitting down after I’d been seated and finishing before I left. She fidgeted with the plastic coffee cup lid, pulling it back as she stared out of the window. Then she picked up her lunch receipt and read it. I had my book, she was reading a receipt. Something about that action made me imagine loneliness.

It’s not for me to imagine what is lonely for one person or another. But the act of reading a receipt because there is nothing else to do with your eyes sort of made me feel sad. She then got up, removing her tray and left.

Maybe that was all good with her. Perhaps it is some sort of projection on my part. But I admit that I was happy to have my book. Perhaps I just wouldn’t be happy to just look around quietly during lunch by myself with nothing to read except the receipt that tells me what I already know – what I had and how much it was.

I do enjoy my quiet. But mostly with a book or space to think. And maybe that’s what she was doing….taking her own small space to let her mind stretch.