What A Life

I had thought over the last few years that if I were to have a blog I would call it “What A Life” but coming in late to the blogosphere that name was taken. No big surprise, it’s a common, simple phrase. Easy to remember, easy to spell, good prerequisites for a blog name.  The reason that phrase has always resonated with me goes back many years to my life as a single, young woman living in Vancouver. I was taking a bus downtown one day and a man got on at a stop after me. He was grubby, unkempt, dressed in old worn pants and a dirty suit jacket, wearing a hat on his ratty mess of hair. He was what we would now call a street person or a homeless person but back then he was a rubby or a bum to us, terms I had heard as a kid.  But he had bus fare and he got on the bus for a ride downtown.

                                

I was sitting up front and the man took a seat up there as well, near to the driver and close enough to me that I could hear him.  For the entire trip he repeated the same phrase over and over again….”what a life”.  That was it.  Up and down, slower and faster, drawn out and rushed together. What a life, what a life, what a life, what a life.  I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He looked straight ahead and stared out the windshield, oblivious to me. He never stopped, just paused for breath and carried on. That phrase seemed to me like a worry bead or a mantra to him, something he carried around and used to calm himself. It was as much a part of him as his hair or beard. I loved it. Of all the phrases a man like him could be repeating to himself this was not one of the ones I expected.  What had gone on in his life to make ‘what a life’ be the only appropriate thing to say?  The truth is that it was probably the same things that go on in all our lives that make us stop sometimes and shake our heads and say “what a life”.

So these are the things I want to write about in my blog, things that make me say “what a life” in a good way or a surprised or shocked way.  Life is crazy and stuff is constantly going on around us that could make any one of our brains switch over to one phrase for comfort.  If it ever happens to me I hope that I can be heard repeating something so simple and yet all encompassing as “what a life” because it is quite a life.