“Hell is not punishment, it’s training.”
—Shunryu Suzuki
We moved through the parking lot scattered with oversized pickup trucks and near-derelict cars. The dusk sky was alive with fast-moving clouds. Wind-whipped trees garbed in nubile spring leaves did an energetic dance on the horizon. A flat cube of a building at the end of the parking lot was a cutout from this natural scene. Walmart.
A flat tire on Sunday evening in the rural Northeast required a visit to the superstore. The car had no spare so we needed a donut or a patch kit to make a repair and this was the only open place nearby.
My teenage son hesitated as we approached, looking down. With the coming of spring, he prefers to walk barefoot everywhere. Soles dark with earth, the density of dirt thins in its progress toward the tops of his feet, giving the impression he is becoming a hybrid dirt-being. We agreed that he would leave if asked on account of being unshod.
Entering the store we saw a lone figure, standing still in a yellow vest, her back to the sliding doors. As we drew near the woman became animated as though activated by motion sensors. She gave a warm, toothy smile and guidance to the automotive area at the back of the vast, fluorescent-illuminated space.
The department was empty save racks of tires along the walls. I pushed the electronic call button a few times but no one arrived so I ventured forth to find assistance. Halfway across the store at the electronics section, behind shelves of huge televisions, a towheaded teenager offered to help. He didn’t know anything about tires, he said, but wanted something to do. He seemed eager for human contact, and we started the long walk back together.
Even with the help of a customer, a tattooed man with the bearing of one who had received military training, we gave up searching for a new tire and opted to repair the flat. Arms laden with a jack, plug kit, and lug wrench we continued on, looking for a compressor, which the boy thought he could use to power construction tools in addition to filling the flat tire. Unable to locate a compressor, we wandered about looking for someone to help.
She was stocking boxes of antiseptic wipes when we approached. “Excuse me,” I said, but there was no response. I moved closer and she turned, made a sound like a diving seabird, and waved her arm between us in a gesture of denial. Then she produced a small, spiral bound notebook and thrust it toward me.
I wrote “air compressor” in cursive script on the notebook. She looked at the page, made another high-pitched wail, and shook her head violently. My son observed out loud that my handwriting is terrible. I turned over a new page and tried again, this time in block letters. The woman beamed and murmured, directing us back in the direction from which we had come. There was no air compressor so we agreed that we would resort to a bicycle pump to inflate the tire.
Back at the front of the store, a dozen customers formed a queue at each of the two open stations. A man with long, stringy hair and crazy eyes became irate with the cashier. I was reflecting to my son about the strange atmosphere of sleepiness in the place, as though there was an agent in the air designed to dull consciousness. My son interrupted my commentary with a gesture toward the cashier. She was crying. Another woman, a customer, spoke to her in soothing tones, and as she completed the transaction and began to walk away, turned back and gave the cashier a hug.
Inspired and taking the cue, my son and I both beamed at the cashier with focused attention. All I could think to say was to compliment her earrings. After we paid for the stuff I opened my mouth to make a comforting sound and the words were something like “Know that love is everywhere, always here, and you are loved.”
Outside the wind blew, the clouds flew, and the darkening sky was beautiful. We remarked on a shared feeling of relief at departing that place.
“We just descended into the pit of hell, and look, now we are in paradise,” I said.
We agreed that anyone who was able to perceive and feel the harmony and beauty of nature would not construct such a place as we had just traversed. It would be impossible. People would instead create environments that reflect the inherent consonance of the natural world.
We talked about how the full measure of human beings is untapped and unused in a society where men and women are assessed as resources; how everyone deeply wishes to be used in a manner that accesses a fullness of potentiality, and how this wish goes unfulfilled.
“It’s so hard to see outside the box,” my son commented. “We don’t even notice the limitations of our ideas and beliefs about ourselves and the world. What we consider to be normal is actually sickness.”
It occurred to me that seeing this limitation is itself the beginning of a movement toward a genuine normality.