Blame It On The Train

Happy Monday everyone! ...I had no intentions of writing anything this morning - the extended weekend (snow days!!) made me wish for a permanent weekend. But, here I am anyway. Blame it on the train...

Believe it or not, my favorite time of day is my train ride to school/work every morning. It’s early as hell, and the sun is barely even up. Everyone but the conductor and I are usually asleep. I love it. It’s quiet and I can just relax and listen to music and think. Or not think at all. Today I was not thinking. I was staring out the window…just sort of ‘existing’. The snow was glowing in the sun and hypnotizing me, so I started watching the buildings flash by. That was hypnotizing as well. Mondays make me want to go back to sleep. Eventually, I noticed a hawk flying off in the distance; he was flying in the same direction that the train was going, so I got to watch him for a while. I was excited. Hawks are one of my favorite animals. Anyway, he flew over a graveyard that I had never even noticed was there. It was a very strange feeling; watching a beautiful bird against a blue sky that was getting brighter by the minute and then, oh shit, where’d that graveyard come from? Granted, I had been forced to sit on the opposite side of the train than I usually do, so it’s not really all that odd that I would notice something new. But really? I missed a whole graveyard? I thought, “Hmm... maybe I should sit on this side more often”.

It turns out, from this side of the train I could also see all of the graffiti that is all over the fences near the train station. Classy. Lots of things that I’d rather not repeat here, some pictures of indistinguishable something-or-others, some rap lyrics…and among all of that, someone had spray painted “BE LOVE”. Nothing else. No fancy graffiti-font, no pretty colors. Just bright red, all capital letters – BE LOVE. Well, so much for finishing the train ride without thinking. In there, among all of those ‘destruction of property’ charges, someone actually wrote something profound. They didn’t say “love everyone” or “love yourself” or "love the earth" or anything like that. It was “be love”. Sounds like a fantastic idea to me. Don’t just love someone, be love in general. It’s not an action, but a state of being. Not something you do, but something you are. And it really takes a whole lot less work to be love than to be hate.

So a hawk showed me a grave yard, and somebody with a can of spray paint showed me the best way to live my life. Not bad for a Monday morning. And I think I’ll sit in a different spot on the train again tomorrow. Maybe I’ll learn something else.