Two Restaurants

During the winter walk yesterday evening, I  saw a strange yet comforting sight indeed. Around the Yonge and St. Clair area, I spotted restaurants with the dim lights and the quiet people eating and socializing. And right beside it,  there was a pizza place where a lone woman was having her pizza with a magazine in front of her. I reflected on the joys of both social life and solitude. And I thought that the images of the two kinds of restaurants represents two different states of living. One is the life of connection, ambiance and environment, while the other represents the bare twenty first century necessities: white walls, fast service and free wi-fi. And a third restaurant beside it featured a sign which read: “Danger: gas zone, no smoking”. I thought, it is very caring and considerate that the restaurant would take care of the patrons in this way. For a moment, I even felt a pang of tenderness: even though perhaps it wasn’t intended to be this way, in that moment I could see that somehow the universe and its beings are striving to care for sentient beings in a loving way.

The two restaurants I witnessed exemplify the cycles of my own life, in some respects. There are times when it seems like I am really connected with others and am in the warmth of others’ company. To me, this is most illustrated in the dark, ambient restaurant. In other situations, I feel the exact opposite. There is a kind of sense that I am by myself, with myself, and left to fend for myself. When I sometimes sense that in other people, both tenderness and fear arise in me. There is tenderness, in the sense that I want to comfort that person, and can relate to their solitude: the sense that somehow the universe has left them behind in some way.   And I want to be able to show this person all the things they have, all the love that surrounds them, and to just be grateful for this moment. At the same time there is that strange fear of not ever fully knowing why anyone feels this way, and not knowing how to remedy that feeling either. I think this fear is none other than the sense that perhaps we truly are left to our own devices in the world.

The other restaurant is about interconnection and reconciliation: coming in from the cold, being reunited with a loved one, and having the courage to continue in life’s path. It is about old friends being friends always, even when they haven’t seen each other for a long time, and it is also about the timeless quality of love: always being there as though resuming the friendship after a brief respite. I have often thought that this ‘togetherness’ is more ideal than solitude, but actually, the two states of being complement each other. They seem to represent the extremes of belonging and ‘being thrown’, and yet  without the polarity, there simply wouldn’t be either one. One cycles into the other. For example, there are moments when I feel so alone, and the sight of an animal or a person’s reassuring greeting will be so strong to me that it will pull me into a sense of grace. Had I not been put into that extreme state of solitude, I would not have known what grace truly feels like. So in that sense, the offering only comes when I have tasted moments when there is no offering, or even a sense of self who offers or is being offered something.