Thursday, July 17, 2008

What is this life if full of care....?

During my year in Brescia as an English teacher, one of my jobs was to teach two hours in a nearby factory between 5 and 7 pm three evenings a week. To get me and my three fellow teachers there, we had a taxi for the journey, which took about twenty minutes. But the schedule was really tight.
Because our driver had a terrible speech defect (I think a cleft palate, but what do I know?), I was the one to sit in front to cope with his occasional utterances.
One evening, we were zooming across the derelict landscape when he suddenly stopped and got out of the car. We waited. He was leaning against his cab, immobile. Finally, prompted by my colleagues - this was a delay we couldn't afford - I got out and asked him why he had stopped. He said, without taking his eyes of the horizon:
"Guarda che tramonto!"
I knew the words: "Look what a sunset!", but I couldn't for a moment take in its sense.
But a moment later, I learned a profound lesson. OK, we are in a hurry, but we should never be in such a hurry that we cannot stop to admire a beautiful sunset.
God bless that taxi driver, he taught me an important lesson.

1 comment:

Nea said...

At the time of the westering sun, I will think of you

We have this written on an old piece of wood/root that has an almost human form to it. I'll try and take a photo of it and blog it.