No matter what I tried, I could never stick with it. Whether it was my college club or my first job, I always quit as if I were running away, with just the words, “It’s not what I expected.” The “Work History” section of my resume kept growing like a record, and by the time I turned twenty-six, I had become an empty shell of a person who had never seen a single thing through to the end.
I ended up at an old public bathhouse in a working-class neighborhood. The proprietress, who was over eighty, said to me as I sat at the reception desk: “When you sit here, you see the faces of everyone in town pass by every day. Just remember that.”
I quickly grew bored with the simple work and began writing another resignation letter. That evening, my mother’s gentle voice from the countryside—“Come home if it’s too hard”—sounded to me like the key to an escape route. As I rummaged through the closet to pack my things, I came across a picture diary from my elementary school days. Written in my clumsy handwriting were these words: “I want to be someone who listens to others.”
I remembered those days when I used to love listening to my grandmother’s old stories for hours on end, watching her face suddenly soften. I unpacked my bags and tore up the resignation letter I’d started writing. “I’ll give it a little more of a try here.”
Starting the very next day, I began to “really” look at the people on the other side of the counter. A young man who smelled of oil from the printing plant, an elderly woman with a bad leg, a middle-aged man carrying a burden of loneliness. For the first time, I took the initiative to speak to the people who came in, each with their own reasons.
