Beneath the stadium, people in ones and twos strolled through the air-conditioned food court. One table away from me, university students were talking about a book, Heart of Darkness, just the sort of experience recruiters promise applicants will have in the affluent enclave of a large beautiful campus. Thoughtful, healthy young people, protected from other duties, poked at Joseph Conrad’s story of a brutal colonial effort by Europeans to get their hands on the natural resources of Africa. Pondering a murderous historical episode that Conrad himself witnessed and the fiction he made of it a few years later, one young man wondered whether exploitation is the dark heart of what we humans are capable of. If so, where was hope to be found?
Before long, the students dropped their paper sandwich wrappers into a nearby trash bin and headed out. They had asked a worthy question. We do commit terrible acts or look away while others commit them, even on our behalf. Before we get far into adulthood, most of us know this. But if we’re fortunate, or some might say blessed, we come to know more than that.
I am fortunate to have lived long enough to have grandchildren. There’s a beautiful 800-mile drive to visit them, but recently I rode on a plane to the east coast city where they live. Finally liberated from the narrow seat and the long tube of the jet plane, I found even the utilitarian walkways of the airport hopeful. Ahead, a child looked up to a parent to ask if she could adventure down the automated walkway all by herself, and happily her wish was granted. My own grandchildren were just a few more miles away. The afternoon was full of promise.
Then, rising over the jangle of airport noises came familiar music, a beautiful pop song of years ago. Up ahead, a live three-piece band was performing “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” while we travelers walked left and right before them. I’m never quite certain what the lyrics mean, but that music is another thing. It’s somehow knowing yet hopeful, committed to life in spite of ourselves. As I passed, the band’s rhythms were too alive for me to ignore, so I turned and came back. My afternoon, with family members and a vibrant city just ahead, was magnified, even glorified, by the song. Standing near the band now, I could not keep still.
And I noticed in the stream of people coming from the gates a gray-haired woman mouthing the lyrics to herself as she walked. Another elder moved her shoulders and her hips more than the walking required. A young man in a burgundy jump suit turned toward the band and stretched his arms and legs into a measure or two of dance before continuing on. A healthy minority of people passing in each direction were smiling, quietly singing, or subtly dancing as they walked. Something pulsed there in the corridor. In front of strangers, people, myself included, exposed themselves as secret dancers and admitted to longing and to joy.
Somehow it all compounded: the unexpected music, the promise of travel and of life in general. Some of us could not resist; down deep we had no interest in resisting. You could see, given half a chance, half an invitation, you could see people would take no interest in the bitter heart of darkness. We would choose to be singer and dancer, unscheduled, in any corridor, if only the society we built for everyone invited and allowed it.
