On a cool breezy afternoon, I dragged myself out of the house and got behind the steering of my small red car, to go to the gym. I took the shortest route to reach my destination, windows of the car rolled down. On the way an old acquaintance noticed me and shouted my name out. I stopped the vehicle. The friend came over from the other side of the road and greeted me, heartily. We struck an immediate conversation, although I didn’t get down from the car. The smile on his face widened with each memory about the past, but I remained passive during most parts of the chit chat. Soon he realised my lack of interest and withdrew himself, gently. He waved goodbye and I drove ahead, rolling the windows down.
After the workout, drenched in sweat, I got back into the car, kept the windows open, again. As I drove past a departmental store, I saw my distant cousin getting out of it. I guess she noticed me, (perhaps hoping for a lift or maybe just a small conversation) but I pretended to not have seen her, and continued to drive. Having no intensions of returning home early, I opted to take the longer route. I shut the windows, put on the air conditioner and the car tape, and started humming as I passed a few concrete structures. I kept shuffling songs on the stereo while I stopped at the signal waiting for the light to go green. Just then, a familiar girl strode past on the right. She was my muse, my secret love interest (whom I hadn’t met in ages), and wondered whether I could talk to her. She seemed to be in no hurry to walk, and as the light went green I was almost parallel to her, driving slow along the footpath. I could’ve stopped but didn’t, and reluctantly sped up. Despite the fact that my home was just a couple of kilometres away, the way back felt long, and lonesome. And just then, I caught sight of a wretched man, a bottle of alcohol in one of his hands, and a dagger in the other, chasing another man from across the road. The man with the weapon splinched the second man’s arm and stabbed a blow on the chest. He took off, and the wounded man collapsed just about 3 feet away from my vehicle. Once again I did not get down off the small red car, and just like before, drove away, leaving the man to breathe his last.
As I reached home, I felt suffocated. I felt uneasy and just lied on the bed. It dawned upon me that all the events that had occurred on the way to the gym and back, had an emotional bearing on me. I felt angry for being uninterested while talking to my old friend, felt sad for not helping my cousin by being lazy, felt hopeless for not talking to my love interest because of hesitation and felt shameful for not getting down to help the wounded man because of fear. All this just because I did not get out of my small red car, my shell.
This is what we do majority of times; repent for something which we could’ve done had we come out of our shells. Fear, hesitation, doubt, laziness all of these make us get into the shell and situations worsen as time passes. I guess it’s prudent to face a situation the very first time so that the next time we’re armed and alert to deal with things in a better way, just like before.
