First Class Ticket in Poland
Ξ January 30th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ That's Life |
After flying a very long way from Calgary to Warsaw, Poland, three of my team mates and I finally sat down in our compartment on a train from Warsaw to Sosnowiec. This was the last leg of the journey with the exception of a short drive to the place we would sleep. It had been an arduous journey, yet it was an exciting time for me. I had never been to Europe before and now I found myself on a train in Poland. A new world entirely - or at least it felt that way. The compartment we sat in had 6 seats in it. There were four of us and one of the other 2 seats in our compartment was empty but the last seat, the one by the window, was occupied. The man gave us all a smile and a friendly nod as we took our seats. He didn’t say anything, which was great because we probably couldn’t have understood him anyways.
For the most part our cabin mate took in the journey by simply sitting and watching as the landscape passed underneath us. He was an old man. I’ve never been good at age guessing, so I won’t try, but his face was furrowed with age. He was tanned and his face looked almost leathery. I thought to myself that this is one of those faces a photographer would take a close-up of and then get published in National Geographic. He really did have a beautifully aged face. Pleasing to look at. The man looked like a happy man. He looked like a passive man. I would think he would be a nice person to know. It was funny…I found myself respecting the man, and I knew nothing about him. I almost wished I could tell him that. That, of course, was out of the question for me as I would have been at a loss if he only spoke Polish. So he just looked out the window.
Have you ever had those times when you look at someone you don’t know and wonder what they are up to? You look at them drive past you and you wonder what their life has in store for them. Do they consider how large the world is? Do they ever think about people who are outside of their own immediate influence? Does this person realize that the world is full of people all going about things they consider very important while taking almost no notice of all the other people doing their own things. At the same time most of us are actually doing different things entirely. How can our lives be so different, yet we feel basically the same as everyone else. Well I had one of those moments. I looked across the compartment at the man and wondered what this man’s story was. I wondered if he realized the significance of meeting us on that train. This was my first time on a train in Poland and I’d probably not ever see him again. It was a pretty big deal to me, but he likely didn’t give it a second thought.
What should we do with those instants? Well, we’re taught to love people. I considered that on that trip. I asked myself, “Do you love this guy?” To my surprise I found that I could indeed love him. I already respected him and that’s a part of love. My first visit to Europe was fascinating to me. I have always been interested in World War II. I have grandparents who were involved in one way or another with that war. I often wonder what it must have been like. I often wonder if I might have been able to fight in it. Would I have what it takes? To fight? To survive? To lead? And so to be in a place where this truly epic event took place was striking.
Poland is of particular interest because it was the first place Hitler occupied at the onset of the war. What’s that like? I mean, can you imagine it? It’s such a foreign concept to me. How does a country be free one day and then occupied the next? How does a person who lives there deal with that? Could you? Super time rolled around and the man took a brown paper bag from his jacket that was hanging on a hook on the compartment wall. His meal consisted of a cheese sandwich and a tomato. The man ate the sandwich as he watched the countryside recede into distance. He began carving the tomato and carefully taking the slices off the blade of the knife with his lips. It was then I began to wonder…
This man would have been a child when the war ended. He may have even been around when the war began. He very well might have seen some of the most unbelievable things a person could see. Did he watch friends get taken away to Nazi camps? Was he in one of those camps? I found myself respecting him all the more. You see, I’ve been fortunate to have never had to worry for my life in the kinds of ways people who are surrounded by war do. I’m very aware of what it must be like. I mean at least I consider the fact that I’ve can’t fully appreciate what life is like in those situations. Some people these days don’t give it any thought at all. We should though, shouldn’t we? I mean the world wars impacted just about every country in the world. For those of us in the west, the fact that the wars were not in our own backyards is very significant. Because of this, as the soldiers from those wars pass on, what is left here is a people who just can’t relate to what it took to build our countries and how important it was to stop what Hitler was doing across the ocean.
I wonder what the man on the train was thinking while we steamed southward. I wonder if the pleased look on his face was because he knew how hard life can be and train rides are easy. I wonder if he was thinking about how much better things are now that Hitler was gone, or now that Poland was no longer communist even? Maybe he was just looking forward to seeing someone he loved. Maybe there was a leathery-faced old woman somewhere that was patiently awaiting his return home. The point is that we all feel for the most part that we are a relatively insignificant part of a huge human race. I mean we all have our place and we can all make a difference, but for the most part we realize that we are one of very many people on the this planet. Our feelings in this regard are usually rooted in modesty and the knowledge that there have been greater men than us. The interesting thing is that it’s not just the man who freed Poland from Nazi occupation who is important and worth remembering today. The man who saw it with his own eyes and knew the hardship that came with it is almost more important. That man’s life is far from insignificant. He is the evidence of why the war needed to be fought. He is the reason why someone chose to send people to a battlefield where men and boys faced the very real possibility of having to pay the ultimate price. It is vitally important that we remember these things.
So we need to respect those who have suffered at the hand of the unjust. We need these people to know that we haven’t forgotten that there is something worse than taxes and having to go to work each day. We need to let these people know that their suffering has truly earned them a place of honor in our minds. The sun began to set as the train drew ever-closer to Sosnowiec. Not long now. I couldn’t help but think about the finality of our disembarking the train. If I was to have any impact on that man who sat across from me, I would have to say something soon. I knew I wasn’t going to say anything though. Even if we could communicate in the same language, I still probably wouldn’t say anything. I mean, have you ever had a complete stranger come up to you and say he respected you and thought you had a pleasing face? I haven’t.
Even though I said nothing at all to that man, isn’t it interesting that many people would say that to have sat in a compartment with a strange man from another country was rather non-interesting. That experience could easily have gone by without a person giving it a second thought. It could have gone down in my life as one of the many insignificant things. You know, one of those times that just go passed that we just don’t think really matter at all. Months later I sit down and write about it. What you are reading now is the result. I come to realize that through that seemingly un-eventful meeting of that man and me, a connection was made. At least it was for me. Regardless of how limited my connection with him was, his sitting there across the compartment ultimately got me to write this. It was a catalyst and all that was needed was for me to open my eyes and look.
Watching the world pass you buy can actually be a good thing if you open your eyes to see it.