elizabethlevett

I love boats, all boats, though I’m not really attracted to those monster-size cruise ships. Put me on a ferry boat and I’ll stand way up front on deck the whole time, oblivious to the wind or the current. I realize it’s safer inside, sitting down with the other passengers, but I’ve always felt this way. I met a tourist recently who made her way topside immediately just as I had, and we struck up a wonderful conversation. She is a retired nurse from Ontario, enjoying a few days in our city, seeing the sights and meeting people. She told me she felt safe here, that people had been friendly and kind to her and that she was having a grand time. She also told me she had met a homeless woman and had taken her out for breakfast. This is not something we expect to hear from a tourist. Evidently, the woman she’d met had also been a nurse and had somehow lost everything. When I asked how this had happened, I found I was already constructing scenarios – all of which involved some level of poor judgement or recklessness on the woman’s part. Surprisingly, my new friend told me she hadn’t asked how this person had come to be in her current situation. She didn’t feel it was any of her business.

We enjoyed the rest of our ride around the bay and each other’s company. I shared some trivia about how Andrew Hallidie was inspired to bring a cable car system to San Francisco in the early 1870’s when he saw how the horses suffered trying to navigate damp cobble stone streets up and down our hills and how the Headlands on the north side of the Golden Gate are to forever remain undeveloped thanks to the work of Philip Burton. She told me about treating Eddie Van Halen in her ER. We went our separate ways, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the choices we make, how we walk through the world, and how we treat each other.

Any time we meet someone or even just see someone, we have just a little information about them. From there, we make a choice. We can either take what we know and immediately construct a narrative that limits the way we see them, the way we’re willing to treat them, or we can do something completely different. We can realize the impossibility of knowing their story. We can decide that each person’s life may well contain a limitless number of stories and remain open to whatever they may or may not reveal to us, rather than assuming we know everything we need to know about them and cut off any possible avenue of connection. All I really know is that I would prefer to be seen as more than anyone’s assumptions about me. I’d rather feel free of anyone’s stereotype or judgement. I’d rather see the boundless view right up front on deck, facing the wind, feeling the current, meeting whatever comes along.