Taxi Driver

JULY was a rough month for me, first J then Abed and then the Turks…wasn’t enough with just J?

The only thing I could think of while I was in Istanbul was: “God, please get me out of this country, I want to be back home!!" I couldn’t just cope with the grief at the same time that I was working; it was too much to bear.

Finally, I got my ticket home! However, all the way back home I felt miserable, devastated, horrible... and then I met this lousy Taxi Driver that started talking…

Don’t you see that I want to rest? (I though in my inside) but the Taxi driver kept on talking which actually believe it or not made my day or more than that, it made my whole month.

It was a vague conversation, but he started telling me about his life and how he was happy with it just  the way it was, which made the fact that I felt miserable even more noticeable.

However after talking for a while, I discovered that he has some more issues than I do have, and these are not just eventual problems, this is the life style he has, and that made all the difference.

He's been living in Houston for about 6 years now, he was living in Illinois before until he got fired from his old job, then looking for better opportunities he came to Houston just to realize that if you are not in the oil industry there is little or no chance for you to grow here, so eventually he became a taxi driver.

He has no family but he would like to have one, and 4 out of 7 nights a week he sleeps in his Taxi which is not even his taxi, it’s a loaner where he has to surrender around 400 USD per week as taxi’s rent, his dream is owning a Taxi so that he doesn’t have to pay the 400 USD.

Since It was dark outside, because it was almost midnight, he mistakenly thought that I was a student and he encouraged me to finish my degree, and he remarked the fact that a degree could get me  a better job, I was about to tell him the truth but then I thought : “what a heck!” let him continue with the ramble and so he did!!

He actually told me a secret, he told me that in order for you to get the things that you want is just to think about them, I recall his actual words...."If you want to have something, you have to think like if you already have it… feel it… smell it and thus it will be granted"

I tried to deny this fact, but he gave me some examples which I really didn’t believe but I was so much into his chat that I decided to play along with him and I promised him that I would try it next time...he was so gentile that he offered me a copy of "The power of thinking" CDs; The point is...This man might be older and lonely but still he manages to be happy even though his life doesn’t seem to be easy, after listening to  his chat, I thought that maybe I was overreacting and that after all I am not that miserable, and that I should be grateful for the things and people I have with me.

He tough me a lesson and he made me smile, it lasted just for few minutes, but it felt great.

Lesson: I will never deny the fact that I can learn something from any person, even from the people that you believe that don’t have anything to offer.