Sunday, October 28th, 2012

The Hoody Day

Brampton, Ontario

I had spent the evening, resting at the home of Rajneesh, Alka and their kids. It was a good sleep. By 4:15 AM I slipped out of the house on Meridian Rd. and chalked out a cyclic route for myself in the neighbourhood. Late October, being what it is, you find dried leaves moving about. One solo leaf seemed to follow and make his presence known by scrapping across the asphalt, the result of a light wind. Another leaf slid across my path.

About an hour and a half into my walk I saw a larger object moving, on the sidewalk, actually. I chose to stay by trekking on the quiet street itself while the only car making a presence during this period was the newspaper delivery man. Now, I know it's a time close to Halloween and I'm not trying to seriously not get spooked. The larger object was a short man with a hoody on. I could at least make out with a distance street light that he had some facial hair.

"Good morning! How are you? " I greeted. In a slight monotone the return was, " Good morning! ".
I moved forward and made a quick judgment, " A bipolar guy perhaps. " Then he spoke something interesting. It was an actual question.

"What's the secret to happiness? ".

I turned towards him and took him as a queue to walk towards him. After all he had stopped for an answer which was...

"To achieve happiness a person at least has to gain some understanding of who he is - what's his true identity. " Now close to him I could see a real force and I would also appreciate that here is someone coherent as we spoke more. It turned out that he had been walking for the last 5 hours. From what I could gather he was on a genuine spirit quest.

I continued, " People usually become relatively satisfied when they are engaged according to their psycho-physical nature. You do what you like to do."

"But I'm a student of business and I don't like it. I like to work with my hands - to be hands on, but my parents want me to do business..." Our dialogue went on and stayed on, like a light in the dark. He told me he was a student at York University and so I was conveniently able to tell him that there's a Krishna Club on campus every Monday night and that these cool young people go there at the Student Centre.

"I'll check it out. ".

My last words to him were " If you go there just tell them you met the Walking Monk. ".

"I will ", he said. He smiled. We shook hands and moved each on our own way.

7 KM