A Message from the Universe

Down at the petrol station, people park in front of the pumps but don’t buy any fuel. They just block the pumps for the people who need them. They saunter in and get their bacon rolls and their Mint KitKats and they saunter back out and they don't give a toss. It drives me a little bit askew. 

A few months ago, one person managed to park their car strategically so that all four of the centremost pumps were rendered unusable. It required a pinpoint level of accuracy and an immeasurable absence of empathy. I applauded the person as they returned to their car, having bought no petrol, of course. “Amazing parking,” I said as I slow handclapped, “truly amazing.”

Yesterday morning, I was setting off on a bit of a journey and I felt I should fill up the tank before I hit the road. Getting to a pump was a battlefield. Abandoned cars were strewn all over, as insensitive punters stocked up on toilet rolls and hash browns and no fuel whatsoever. I got to a pump eventually, unlocked my fuel cap, released the nozzle, jammed it into the appropriate orifice, squeezed the lever, and waited. And waited. The display showed the cost of the previous fuel fill. Forty Euro. Any moment now, it would reset to Zero and my fuel delivery would begin. I knew that a little alarm was sounding at the cash till inside the shop, alerting the staff to the fact that I was out here, in advance of my trip to Athlone, waiting to get a little gas in the tank.

Any moment now.

I waited.

My own personal fuel temperature began to rise. Badly parked cars, battles for space at the pump, delays en-route to destination, being ignored in my hour of minor need. I started to get the right hump. Perhaps I should let out a roar at the shop window, a Dustin Hoffman like protest along the lines of, “I’m waiting here!!” I could do it too. I have the lung capacity. That’s for damn sure.

Then I looked down.

Beside the petrol pump there stood a stainless steel circular bollard, about a metre high. It has a black plastic cap that fitted on top of the tubular fixture. It was evidently there to prevent errant vehicles from banging into the petrol pump. A guard, a protector, quietly doing its job.

Someone had taken a pencil and written on the top black surface of the plastic bollard cover. Where most writing instruments would not have made any impression on the dark surface, the graphite of the pencil had seemed to taken to the medium remarkably well. The single word, that somebody had written there, stood out in subtle but legiible relief from the background. The almost childlike cursive style seemed all the more personal and intimate. Somebody, probably somebody in my own heightened state of annoyance, had taken a moment, produced a pencil, and written a message to whoever may come after them.

A one word message.

The message said, “Smile.”

I don’t think I smile as much as I used to. I don’t think I’m alone in this. The world is a harsh place, in many ways, and we are plugged into the harshness of the world in a way that previous generations could not dream of. Two hundred years ago, a horror or a sadness on the other side of the world would never be known or considered. Today, it is in our heads two minutes after it happens. I'm not bemoaning this connectivity, I think it helps us to keep the world straight, to not let horrors be enacted without any repercussions. It's necessary, but it's also hard. We are plugged into the whole wide world and it is a pretty tough narrative to keep up with. 

I remember an illustration the appeared in a copy of the Radio Times when I was quite young, decades before Internet and Cable News. It showed a humanoid figure reclining in some kind of comfy chair. The naked form was connected by hundreds of cables running from every corner of its body to devices and machinery, being fed every aspect of the world directly into its being. The figure in the chair was charred and frazzled, twisted, and distorted, obviously in significant pain. I sometimes think we’ve kind of become that character. Wired to the whole planet and all of the grief and horror it has to offer. Bearing it all as best we can.

Maybe that’s why I don’t always smile as much as I used. Maybe it isn’t.

All I reckon, having read the single word message on the bollard at my local petrol station, is that it’s okay to smile now and again if we can manage it. More that that perhaps. There is, perhaps, an onus on us to smile and live and enjoy our lives as best we can. Because when we do that, we can remain strong and able to assess and fight and resist where necessary. If we try to carry the world on our packs, forever unsmiling, we will surely break in two and be of no use to anyone.

The petrol pump clicked and the fuel started flowing. I was on time for my meeting in Athlone and it was a useful meeting. I had a coffee afterwards and a nice chat with the guy I met. Not about the job or the cost of it or the difficulty in doing it. It was about his sons, and how he loves books about history, and how he can sing for hours if you give him a guitar.

And, somewhere in the middle of all that chat, I had a smile.