got to find a common thread

title: indestructible – artist: matisyahu

It’s at least a little more, if not quite the more you were seeking.

For some reason, this is one of the moments that seems to sum up a lot of that night for me:

I was seated next to the only person in the mix that I knew, bouncing around conversations as they occurred or as I was drawn into them. At this moment, it was centering around the three of us that were gathered at our tiny table. I was at an angle; my crossed legs pointed away from the table, my torso turned more towards the conversation.

He’d been at the table across from us, and I saw him get up in my peripheral, but didn’t think much of it. People were coming, going and just passing by all night. Soon, while I wasn’t entirely sure, I thought I felt something on one of my legs. I looked down and he was crouched at my side, staring at my calf. And that is when I saw a pale green spider scurry towards my knee and back down to my calf. I didn’t even have time for my typical reaction, which would’ve been to freak a bit while swatting at the offending arachnid, only to spend the remainder of the night on high alert for other crawling creatures. Instead, his hand swiftly and deftly moved to corral and remove the spider, his touch extraordinarily gentle and careful, as much to avoid injury to the spider as my sense of propriety, his sense of calm so contagious that I never once found myself on the lookout for other bug-type things, real or imagined.

Once retrieved, he got up and relocated it to the hanging planter suspended from the street lamp. When I thanked him and commented on the kindness in his removal method, he proceeded to relate to me the moment he made the decision that caused this course of action.

We’ve all got more to give than we often think we do.