Repenting in the dust

She was a few machines over from me.  On one of the stationary bikes, talking with a friend standing nearby.  Remembering my own age, I assumed she was in her seventies.

And when I heard what she was saying, I thought I had her pegged.

She was telling her friend about a play she saw at Theatre Aquarius the night before -- that some of her companions gave up on at intermission, at which she stayed to the end only to get her money's worth.  It was "The Invisible Hand" -- a story of a kidnapped American banker held for ransom in Pakistan, who has to earn his freedom by helping his captors with his financial know-how.  It's apparently not an easy play to watch.

And my friend (I don't know her name.  She doesn't know mine.  We have never talked.  Why do I suddenly call her "my friend"?) was telling her friend that the play was simply "too dark" for her taste, which set them both to wondering and lamenting at the change in theatre from lighter fare to more heavy, controversial, "thought-provoking" stuff.

I thought I had her pegged.  I began to see myself as somehow superior for liking the darker stuff.  I prided myself on my restraint in not making any comments, and just keeping out of the conversation.

But then I began to wonder.  

I realized she was, actually, quite self-aware in the way she straightforwardly admitted to her friend that she likes to go theatre for something light and enjoyable.  And I had to ask myself, what's wrong with that?

And then came the real surprise.  From theatre, this seventy-something woman's conversation moved on to cars, and why she bought the one she did, and the relative merits (including engine size and accessories) of the Honda CRV and HRV ("There are two Honda RV's?" I found myself wondering) and some Subaru I have never heard of.  Then on to the newset cell phones and what they have to offer (again something I do not understand at all).  And then to the new leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives and his relative weaknesses and strengths against the platforms and leaders of the Liberals and New Democrats.

In other words, that seventy-something woman on the stationary bike left me in her dust.

By this time I was over on the treadmill, and beginning to despair that I don't know nearly as much as she does.  Nor about as many things.

I wondered if I would ever know that much, no matter how old I live.

And then I began to wonder about maybe the thing that really counts.  

Why don't I just stop comparing and wondering how I measure up, and just open my ears and my mind and no doubt my heart, to be happy to listen and learn what someone else might have to tell me?