A Very Nice Man
When I arrived in Mexico City a couple of weeks ago, I went looking for a leafy sidewalk bistro I'd visited last July. I remembered glancing up from the menu and spotting an old friend and her dog just steps away -- someone I knew from New York who I hadn't seen in at least a decade. I wondered if something equally magical might happen if I placed myself there again.
One singing guitar player came by, then another. . . and then, a man pushing a cart with a little boy riding in it. They asked if I wanted a shoe shine. Having not yet checked into my room or changed my clothes since arriving from Oaxaca, I was wearing heavy leather boots. I hesitated - the boy was young. I looked at the man; he seemed gentle. The boy appeared to be loved, and didn't have the vacancy in his eyes that you see when people have left their bodies.
The little boy sat on a small wooden box while he unpacked cloths and brushes, and a few different glosses and glazes. He instructed me on where to prop my boot, and proceeded to clean, polish and buff while I asked him how old he was, was he in school, what was he learning. He told me he was seven years old, he'd been working with his father since he was three -- his school was just a few blocks away. . .and he was learning English. He shared a series of words and phrases he'd committed to memory, howareyou, iamfine, what'syourname, myfavoritecolorisred.
The father, sitting on a bench nearby, returned to the table when he saw the boy putting the finishing touches on his work -- and asked if I wanted him to redo it. No thank you, your son was very professional, I told him. The father signaled the boy to pack up the gear while I paid the father and thanked them both.
I watched them clean each other's shoes with patience and care a few feet away before the father lifted the boy back onto his seat on the cart. The boy turned and waved to me as the father pushed the cart down the street.
Boy on the metro, Mexico City
I've been in graduate classes with people in their 20s who have never had a job before -- and this boy was a working professional at the age of seven. What gets lost or delayed in developing a sense of selfhood when everything is handed to you?
Mario is a rare and wonderful person -- fiercely intelligent, visionary, generous, high-spirited, a gifted and inspiring teacher. . . he makes no apologies for himself, and instills a similar kind of self-confidence in those around him. I can only speculate about what creates such a person, but I wonder if it stems at least partly from having grown up being different -- and adapting to one's sense of 'difference' by becoming one's own greatest ally -- a practice of effort and will, both which Mario reminds us are required for yoga. Mario has internalized the philosophy and wisdom of yoga like nobody I have ever met.
When the seas part for you, you miss out on the opportunity to want with any conviction; too much ease fuels complacency. Isn't the pleasure in life at least partly in the wanting? Putting aside questions of justice — adversity and friction can fortify one's sense of self.
None of this is big news: privilege and too many unearned advantages foster a kind of myopia and fragility. None of us exist here without suffering and challenges — but people who haven't had to surmount major obstacles for basic survival may need to engage greater effort and will to achieve perspective than those who have walked minefields throughout their lives.
A friend told me a story about his mother's dementia. He came out in a time when being gay wasn't considered normal and acceptable, and his sense of feeling embraced and known by his parents was always compromised.
On one of their final visits, the mother no longer remembered him. My friend pushed his mother's wheel chair on the grounds of the home where she lived - they stopped for a moment and she said, 'I don't know who you are, but you're a very nice man.'