When I clicked on that message I was pleasantly surprised by a greeting from a lady asking me if I had stayed in a youth hostel in Durban South Africa in 1970!  Wow, did that start a new cavalcade of thoughts, about my visit to South Africa, although my recollections of specific happenings are mostly shrouded by the mist of time.  However, enough wisps from that era popped up to the surface of my sea of memories to convince me that I was probably the person she was seeking. In her next message the lady gave me the address the guest had given and it was indeed my address! She said the reason she contacted me was that her grandmother, she called her Gran, had just opened the back of her house as a Youth Hostel that day, and I was her first guest.

And more than that, she says I provided Gran with a hand written list of the International Youth Hostel rules, since she didn't know the rules or have a copy of them. Gran eventually housed thousands of guests during the 30 years that the hostel was open, and she used the list I gave her the whole time., although it was eventually typewritten when the hand written one wore out. Imagine, learning about such a small act of thoughtfulness almost 50 years later.....it makes me wonder how many other small kindnesses I left in my wake as I circled the globe. When you get into the habit of doing them without thinking, you just don’t realize how often you may do something seemingly very minor that actually has a far reaching impact on the folks you help. Take it from me, the reward for doing all of them comes when one is acknowledged 50 years later. And this whole thing is a perfect example of the beneficial effect of all that character building I experienced during my college days that perhaps will be described in my new book. WOW.  And to top it all off, the lady is looking for information for a book she is writing.  Imagine that, another writer wants to put this story about me in her book too!  How synchronistic is that?  

As I searched my foggy memory banks for my time in Durban, I came up completely blank about the Youth Hostel.  But I did recall a fellow traveler that I encountered there, with whom I spent a few precious hours that enriched my life.  As I stand here looking back through the lens of experience I can see that he met several criteria that now describe my “perfect man”.  So why did I send him away?  For months and even years afterward I regretted that action, done ostensibly because he wanted more from me than I was willing to share at the time.  Even now as I reminisce, those same incongruous feelings of both soul connection and regret come flooding across my heart.  These feelings were painfully fresh when I was in Johannesburg a week or so later, so I made an effort to “find” him.  I went to the building where he worked at a newspaper, and sat outside to see if I could catch a glimpse of him coming or going.  I never did.

I can’t recall his name now, or why I didn’t go into the building and ask to see him. I’m sure it was probably because I was afraid that he might not remember me or want to see me again, since I had deliberately shooed him away.  But I’ve carried that feeling with me ever since, of a fella that treated me very gently, shared with me his innermost thoughts, and showed me literally how to stop and smell the roses.  I wonder, what would have been the outcome if I had chosen differently?  Did fear cause me to choose the path that would deny me my one and only chance to experience the love of my “perfect man”?  Or was it merely a dogged determination to stay within the narrow confines that defined my moral compass at that time? I have yet to learn the answer to these questions.

In any case, it was surely a lesson for me. It deepened my understanding of how a strong moral character is so much more than the just task of actually distinguishing right from wrong in each situation. Now, with the benefit of experience, if I ever again get such an opportunity I am prepared to consider a different fork in the road of life.  Just another example for my epitaph…”She was too late smart”…..