So for those who keep up with my blog, you may remember the day back in October when my car broke down in Charlotte. If not you can read here. Any way, I stopped in there on my way back to Thomasville for the camp out a couple weeks ago and saw the same guy who was kind enough to help me and allow me to leave my car there over night. Again, on my way back to Gardner-Webb last night there was a LOT of traffic, what is normally a 2 hour drive to GWU, took 3 hours. I was also getting very tired so I decided to stop for what I thought would be a brief moment to pick up a drink at the same gas station I had broken down at earlier.
When I pulled in, I immediately noticed the man who had helped me out. He was outside picking up the trash that people had left outside. I walked in grabbed a drink and a snack and went to pay. He walked in while I was paying and to my surprise, he recognized me from that night. We got to talking about the holidays and how he celebrates holidays. He went to his mom's house to eat with his mom and brothers and sisters. Nothing out of the ordinary. We joked around about things that had been going on. He has a great sense of humor. We talked about plans for the future. He wants to join the army. We talked about religion. He is Hindu. We talked about the languages. He speaks Urdu (pronounced Urru do roll the r's like spanish). We talked about our homes. His is 7000 miles away in Pakistan.
This man had nothing against me. He did not look at me differently. He did not think differently of me because of my religion. I am amazed by this man. He holds no blanket judgments. He simply wanted to talk. He wanted to talk about life. Just like I did.
After talking for about 30 minutes, I realized that I must be getting back to school and Ali wished me safe travels back to school. Since the traffic was horrendous, I had a lot of time to think about this. I was the one who had the blanket judgments. I was the one that thought he was automatically a bad person. I was the one who was completely wrong in the whole thing. He is a normal guy who has an awesome story. I have been blown away today by the lack of judgment cast on me while I was talking to him, and the incredible amount of judgment cast by myself during the conversation. Yet every one of those judgments was broken to pieces after talking to him. People are people no matter what color, background, or religion. That is probably one of the neatest things I have realized lately. People are People.
