Latest / Infinite Threads with Bob Barnett / The Man at the Red Light

Transcript

The Man at the Red Light · Infinite Threads with Bob Barnett

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Infinite Threads.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Bob.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: This week, We're doing something different.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't ever say that, do I?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to tell one story over five episodes.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it's actually five stories.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Five people moving through what seems like one completely ordinary day.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know one another.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Most of them will never know how their lives touched.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: But by Friday, we will.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: So let's begin.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: His name was Mark.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And by 817 that morning, Mark had already decided that the day was lousy.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: He had overslept.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: The coffee maker had somehow produced something that tasted like heated brown water.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: He couldn't find the folder that he needed for work.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then, just as he was leaving the house,
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  SPEAKER_00: His phone reminded him about a bill that he had forgotten to pay.
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  SPEAKER_00: Nothing catastrophic,
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  SPEAKER_00: just one of those mornings when little things begin piling up until
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: the entire universe feels personally involved.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Mark got into the car already irritated,
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: and that matters because sometimes we think an argument begins When two people meet.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Usually it doesn't.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it begins 20 minutes earlier with a broken coffee maker.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Mark pulled onto the main road.
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  SPEAKER_00: Traffic was heavy.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Of course it was.
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  SPEAKER_00: He changed lanes.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody honked.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Mark immediately decided the other driver was an idiot.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: The other driver May have thought exactly the same thing.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Neither one had gathered much evidence.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then Mark reached the red light.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: He was going to be late now.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not terribly late.
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  SPEAKER_00: Seven minutes, maybe 10.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're already irritated, seven minutes begins to feel like a personal attack.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: The light stayed red.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Mark stared at it.
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  SPEAKER_00: He could see the cross-traffic moving.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then his phone buzzed in the cup holder.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: He glanced down.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: A message from his brother.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Call me when you get a chance.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Mark looked at it and sighed.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not now.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: He put the phone back down.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: The car behind him honked.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: The light had turned green.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Mark muttered something that I probably shouldn't repeat on Infinite Threads
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: and started forward.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Then the car ahead stopped suddenly.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: A man was trying to cross the street.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: An older guy, probably in his 70s.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was moving slowly and carrying two grocery bags.
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  SPEAKER_00: Mark hit the brake.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And for a half second, all the irritation of the morning had somewhere to go.
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  SPEAKER_00: The light.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: The traffic.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: The horn behind him.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And now, this guy.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Then one of the grocery bags split.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: An orange rolled into the street.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Then another.
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  SPEAKER_00: The old man stopped.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: He looked embarrassed.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And just like that, Mark's anger lost its target.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that something?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: There was no idiot holding up traffic.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: There was just an older man standing at an intersection Trying to catch his groceries.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Mark put the car in park.
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  SPEAKER_00: He got out.
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  SPEAKER_00: The guy behind him honked again.
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  SPEAKER_00: Mark ignored him.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: He grabbed the oranges, handed them back, and helped the man get the torn bag to the curb.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: It took maybe 30 seconds.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: The old man said, sorry about that.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Mark said, you're fine.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he meant it.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Guys, that was it.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: No music swelled.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody applauded.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Mark got back into the car and drove away.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: He was still late, guys.
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  SPEAKER_00: The bill still needed pay.
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  SPEAKER_00: His coffee had still been terrible.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: But something Something inside had shifted.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not dramatically, but just enough.
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  SPEAKER_00: A few minutes later, he pulled into a little coffee shop near his office.
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  SPEAKER_00: He needed something better than the brown water that he had gotten at home earlier.
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  SPEAKER_00: Behind the counter was a woman named Maya.
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  SPEAKER_00: Mark didn't know her name yet.
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  SPEAKER_00: To him, she was simply The woman at the register.
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  SPEAKER_00: The place was busy, busy.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know how that is.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone was waiting for a complicated drink.
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  SPEAKER_00: Another customer was asking about a mobile order.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maya looked like she was trying to keep five things moving at once.
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  SPEAKER_00: Mark ordered coffee and something to eat.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Maya tapped the screen.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Then she frowned.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
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  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell me that again, please?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: On another morning, Mark might have gotten impatient.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, 15 minutes earlier, he probably would have.
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  SPEAKER_00: Instead, he looked at her Really looked at her.
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  SPEAKER_00: Her hands were shaking.
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  SPEAKER_00: Just a little.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not enough that most people would even notice.
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  SPEAKER_00: But Mark did.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe because 30 seconds in an intersection had slowed him down enough
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: to start seeing people again.
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  SPEAKER_00: So he repeated the order.
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  SPEAKER_00: She entered it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then the register froze.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maya apologized again.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Mark?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he almost laughed.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Not at her, but at the morning.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: He said, take your time.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that the machines are having a day too.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maya smiled at that.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was a small smile, but it was the first one that she had managed in quite some time.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: You have no idea, she said.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Mark paid.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: She handed him his receipt.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: He put $5 in the tip jar.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not because he was trying to be generous, necessarily.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: He just did.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Then he took his coffee and left.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: By the time he reached the office, Mark had mostly forgotten the whole thing.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's important because we tend to imagine That moments have to feel important
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: while they're happening to us,
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: at the moment they're happening to us in order to matter.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: But they don't.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Mark had no idea what kind of morning that Maya was having.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't know that she had spent most of the night awake.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't know that shortly before he walked into the coffee shop,
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: she had received a phone call that scared her badly enough that she had stepped into
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: the stock room just to breathe for a minute.
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  SPEAKER_00: He didn't know why her hands were shaking.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: All he knew was that the register wasn't working.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And for once, he didn't make the moment worse.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, guys, sometimes, that's the entire contribution.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: We don't fix someone's problem.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: We simply don't add ourselves to it.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Mark had started the morning carrying irritation.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: He could easily have handed it to the driver behind him,
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  SPEAKER_00: then to the old man in the street, and then to Maya.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And she, She might have handed some of it to the next person, to somebody else.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how days can move.
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  SPEAKER_00: One person passes something to another without ever realizing that they were holding it.
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  SPEAKER_00: But this morning, something interrupted the chain.
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  SPEAKER_00: A torn grocery bag.
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  SPEAKER_00: Something as simple as a torn grocery bag.
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  SPEAKER_00: A few runaway oranges.
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  SPEAKER_00: A human being standing in the street.
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  SPEAKER_00: And guess what, guys?
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  SPEAKER_00: Mark saw him.
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  SPEAKER_00: And because he saw him, something softened.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then Mark walked into the coffee shop carrying something different.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not great wisdom, not enlightenment, just a little more patience than he had 20 minutes earlier.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: He handed some of that.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Tamiya.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then he went to work.
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  SPEAKER_00: As far as Mark knew, the story ended there.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it didn't.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of hours later, someone else would walk into that same coffee shop.
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  SPEAKER_00: A young guy, backpack, flustered.
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  SPEAKER_00: He had missed his bus and had no idea what he was going to do next.
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  SPEAKER_00: And because of the kind of mourning Maya was having,
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: she might easily have told him she was too busy to help.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: But something had changed in Maya too.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: A stranger had given her a little room when she needed it.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now she had a little room left to give to somebody else.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Mark would never know that.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: He never would know that his deed was traveling.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: That his patience was traveling.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Neither would the old man with the oranges.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: None of them knew they were already sharing the same day.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: But they were.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Guys, isn't that amazing?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about it.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is the difference we make.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow we'll step behind the counter.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: We'll meet Maya.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll discover what Mark could not see when he walked into that coffee shop.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Every story, every voice, every voice.
• 12:55
  [music]