When a madman smiles at you - Rumi

Galen, the great physician, asked one of his assistants
to give him a certain medicine.

"Master, that medicine is for crazy people!
You're far from needing that!"

Galen: Yesterday a madman turned and smiled at me,
did his eyebrows up and down, and touched my sleeve.
He wouldn't have done that if he hadn't recognized
in me someone congenial."

Anyone that feels drawn,
for however short a time, to anyone else,
those two share a common consciousness.

Rumi
From Rumi's Little Book of Love and Laughter

version by Coleman Barks

~

I had an experience last year similar to this.
I encountered a black man who came up quickly
behind me in his wheelchair while I was shopping
at the local Walmart.  I laughed and quickly got out of
his way because he startled me.  He engaged with me
in my startledness with a grin and some banter. I bantered
back, feeling awkward yet relieved by the humor.  There
was a connection there that was lighthearted, yet strange.
 But I just went with it.  He had one leg in a boot cast,
so I assumed he had  been injured - thus the wheelchair. 
We continued our banter in the middle of the grocery aisle.
I was feeling a bit captured, and am sure we appeared crazy
to those around us...  as they slowly maneuvered past us... :)

A few weeks later I saw him again from a distance, although
 he didn't see me. He was still in his wheelchair, with the boot
cast on - just sitting in an open spot in the store.  He suddenly
turned his head and said something over his shoulder -
 to no one there!

I realize now that he was my "madman" in a wheelchair who
recognized something "congenial" in me for a short time
through our smiles and banter...

The "medicine" it seems is to see that we are alike,
that we all share a common consciousness,
even in our "madness" sometimes...
and in that we can find compassion for each other.

Namaste
_/\_