The Lucky Ones

Last week, our run was one of the smallest, but one of the most profound we have had this semester. Although it was cold, we saw many different people. One of the biggest things we noticed was the sense of community that we stumbled upon in the Coop. As a few of us walked in to talk to two of the people sitting there, we noticed that there were a lot more belongings than there were people. The woman talking to us began to tell us that all of the food they get they save until everyone is there and then they put it in the middle and share it. She told us this as she was holding a pizza box to her body for warmth and smiling at the fact that a group “of young people like [us]” had come a little bit ago and brought them freshly baked Tollhouse cookies. She was one of the most cheerful women I have met during these runs, and the hope she gave me - I know she passes on to every person she shares her food with.
Another girl that we met struck me personally. She was sitting outside of CVS and we passed her once starting our run and then again heading back to the debrief. The first time we handed her a sandwich, exchanged a few words and continued on. She seemed friendly, but also very absorbed in the book she was reading and trying to keep warm. On our way back, we gave her a second sandwich and stopped to talk with her for a few seconds longer. The first thing I noticed was that she was my age, the second was that the book she was reading was a textbook. She was a student, just like me, trying to get her education so that she could make something of herself.
These are two things we have never really seen during our runs: a community of people that come together to keep each other warm and share food mixed with good humor, and a student who is just like the rest of us. People throw around the word lucky a lot in everyday life, but in both of these cases I think it takes on its true meaning. Those people have a support system, they have others to lean on and to gain strength from. The girl we met is going to school. She’s getting an education, and maybe someday she will be able to help others to get out of the situation she was once in. And then there’s us. We were the lucky ones – because we were the ones that got to take away the lessons that these Harvard Square prophets had to give.