10/17/2018
Back Bay T Stop - Dartmouth St at Stuart St (5:13 PM)
Beacon St at Washington / Kirkland (5:52 PM)
I was biking through the intersection of Hampshire and Kirkland on this fine October afternoon when a sudden glint of light caught my eye – keys!
Normally, I stop and pick up any valuables I come across while biking, but in this case I was in a minor hurry and I initially kept going. The usual reasoning nagged at me, though, as I pedaled toward the next intersection – what if those were my keys, what if they belonged to someone famous, wasn’t it just the right thing to do, and so on – and eventually the guilt and curiosity of my inner monologue got the better of me. I turned the bike around, pedaled back toward Kirkland, and pulled to a stop at the light.
Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice – TIM??? I turned, and realized I’d somehow run into a former colleague, someone who I hadn’t seen in close to three years and, quite frankly, thought I would never see again. I’d hired her into my team but we’d only worked together for a few months because I’d been laid off soon after she started. We chatted for a few minutes and got caught up on how our lives had changed and grown over the past couple of years.
At one point in the conversation, I remembered that I’d wanted to apologize to her, and so I did, because when she was interviewing with us I’d described a vision for her career that I knew had not manifested after I was let go. She responded like most people I’ve apologized to in my life – that it was OK, that I didn’t need to apologize, and that it wasn’t really my fault, anyway. I guess there was truth to her response because I’d intended to follow through on everything I told her during the interview and had simply been prevented from doing so due to factors beyond my control. But it also was inarguable that she took the job because of what I said would happen if she did – and what I said would happen, didn’t happen.
When our conversation wrapped up, I remembered what had made me stop in the first place and I went back to look for the keys. I struggled to find them at first and after a couple of minutes I considered giving up. Finally, I saw the light and went over for a closer look. As I stood over the keys, I realized that I hadn’t seen keys at all but a piece of metal with multiple jagged edges. It was lucky that I hadn’t run over it on the bike because it might have shredded a tire and caused me to fall across the pavement. I picked up the metal, handling it carefully so I wouldn’t cut my fingers, and dropped it into a trash can along the side of the road.
The difference between a truth and a lie sounds so simple on the surface that we can’t help but oversimplify it. We think that if we say something that is true in the moment, it isn’t possible for us to have lied. But we also feel lied to anytime someone tells us something that turns out to be untrue even if there was no intent to lie. How can someone feel lied to if there isn’t a willing liar? I suppose good intentions are good but they aren’t good enough. We have to acknowledge the reality of what is wrong and, if possible, do what we must to fix it, even if all along our every intent was geared toward a different outcome.
