As I sit on an old and dirty bench in rather cold weather waiting on a train that seems will never come, my mind wanders. I sit under a covering that shelters me from the cold autumn sunlight that is streaming through the clouds that tend to suffocate and choke out the brightness. It is a brilliant Sunday afternoon, and yet everyone around me (all three other people) and myself are dressed in dark color schemes. I look down at myself and my eyes are shocked by the bright and childish aqua blue color that is my headphones; the headphones that are delivering the poetic and soulful stories accompanied by beautiful, melodic sounds of Mumford and Sons. Their songs have poignant meaning that stir my soul more than this Sunday morning’s message at church.
How truly odd it is to wait for a train, to surrender ones independence to something you truly have no control over. I stare not at the not so old tracks, but at the old rocks that they sit on, and the old wooden beams laid between them. The world is old, but some parts are older than others. When sitting at a train depot in Seattle, a person cannot picture men in top hats and women in bustles or hoop skirts awaiting an old steamer. In England, hot easy it becomes to let ones mind slip away and forget the steel benches and gum that is permanently adhered to the dirty pavement that people live their daily lives on. I can see a time long before anyone I have ever known lived. A time when there was no surrendering your independence, because you really had none to start with (well us women at least).
Idealization. We all do it, don’t we? Grass is always greener, if only, back then, other places, and what it? Where do these things lead? Do they breed hearts of dreamers? For if that is true, it surely is not a bad thing. For dreamers will change the world. Or does it breed hearts of discontentment? Is it even possible to have a heart full of content anymore, or is everything made to leave us, the human race, wanting? If you do not have a fancy, dream, or let your mind wander what will become of you? If you do not choose to see reality, reason, and what is truly in front of you, what will become of you?
The rocks that surround me were hewn a long time ago. They have seen changes in language, fashion, technology, faith, government, and civilization as a whole. Do you think they are embittered? Are they content? Are they discontented? They have heard of anguish and joy. Newspapers full of atrocities were left on their faces, and yet they still stand. They have not crumbled. They have not given way. Is that good?
If people heard anguish and joy, atrocities, and things to celebrate, and they never moved; never crumbled to be rebuilt in a stronger fashion, would civilization not have ceased to function and move forward a long time ago? The funny thing about the stones is they are not alive. They have no way to change, unless, man deems them too. They have no free will and no faith. Yet they are from the past, in the present, and will be in the future.
Past. Present. Future.
Is God in the past? Is he in the present? Is he in the future? How you answer those questions makes every other question asked near superfluous. God wants us to dream as others dreamed, wants us to have our hearts broken, and to avoid the plague that is bitterness and discontentment. God has us look to the future of his will and says live in a way that my future will be possible.
The rest is just a bit of nonsense really. The ramblings of a girl waiting at a British train station.
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