The Platform Revelation

The doors to the tram opened. I shuffled my heavy feet and aching legs onto the platform, oblivious to the other passengers heading to their next destination. I could hear the vibrant buzz of transit conversation, the piercing screech of a train whistle and the deep, jazzy, and energetic voice of the PA announcer as it streamed through the station’s high-tech audio system, bounced off the high concrete walls, and echoed throughout the hallowed, vaulted chamber of the main terminus.

I did not care. Under normal circumstances, today would have been any other normal, indifferent day for me. Home to work and back home again, a routine, regular event. But now, agitation, frustration, and anger replaced these otherwise predictable and assumed life moments. An otherwise uneventful and calm return home yielded to a hatred for my former boss who, half an hour earlier, suddenly and without advanced notice, told me I no longer fit with the organization’s plans. My tenure at the company I called my second home vanished, my job written off as disposable and surplus. No warning. No heads up. No meeting. Just a letter on my desk written by my boss, who had the gall to be out of the office during this uproar.

I turned to start to walk down the concrete stairs to the lower platform for the connecting train. But I froze at the top of the stairs, my feet immovable as if a construction worker encased them in cement. A heavy force, unknown and inexplicable, blocked my movement. This was how my mind processed the reality that I now belong to the ranks of the unemployed. I felt like someone else, a stranger, a foreign entity that took over my body, as if my life before today never existed, replaced by a strange emptiness and dark void exiling me to the depths of a cold abyss of worthlessness and vulnerability I never felt before.

What was I to do now? I invested my full energy into my work as a systems analyst. I channelled all my potential, ideas, and time into that company. And now, I am alone, at a train station, wondering where my next line of work will come from, how I would pay my bills, eat, and live. I found myself on the precipice of despair.

Suddenly, an impulse ran threw me, urging me to keep moving. I slowly walked down the stairs. I ignored the utterances of conceited people who bellowed for me to speed up and get out of the way. I did not react or respond. I kept walking down the stairs, engrossed in my thoughts of the repercussions of losing my only job I ever knew and had out of college, how I would manage and what I would do next. My life suddenly felt like a tornado, its vortex of swirling wind sucking everything up that I took for granted. I felt desperate and alone, with nobody to give me a lifeline, like I struggled to keep afloat in turbulent waters. Unemployment lines, the time to dust of my resume, update my credentials and prepare to get disappointed when applying for jobs that would lead to one rejection after another.

This seemed like my life now. But as I continued to block out my immediate surroundings, a sudden change in the dynamics of life as I knew it took shape right in front of my eyes, or I became victim to the most sinister trick ever performed by an invisible and unknown magician. As I approached the midway point of the stairs, my reality began to morph into something weird. The swarm of people around me disappeared, their bodies fading, then vaporizing, and finally vanished like smoke in the wind, their souls repossessed by some esoteric spiritual element, all traces of humanity around me wiped away by the finger of God, only to leave me alone and unharmed in the vast space of the now eerily quiet transit station. It seemed like life and transit decided to team up take strike action on humanity at that moment.

At the bottom of the stairs, I faced a deafening silence. I managed to shake off my hypnotic stupor, to return to reality. Except this reality shifted to another dimension. Not only were humans gone, now shadows of their original self, but there were no connecting trains idling and scheduled to depart. No boisterous passengers crisscrossed paths, ran to board trains, or cussed at other riders for moving to slowly or cutting them off. Birds that normally blessed the indoor atrium with their song and dance no longer used the trees as their stage to chirp and chime. No PA announcements. No distant whistle of arriving trains. The dynamic of life, of change, of the world I knew and to which I grew accustomed was gone. Only an empty kiosk blocked my path. My pulse began to race as my blue eyes scanned the hallowed chamber of dead quiet.

I had become the lone traveller, physically but also psychologically. My briefcase was gone. Thankfully, I was fully clothed, my suit replaced by sneakers, jeans, and an orange t-shirt. No other bag, just me; all six feet of me.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to slow my racing heart. But then my head began to fill with strange symbols. A dragon. Next, a woman, with shoulder-length grey hair, but no face. The dragon spewed fire once onto the woman but did not harm her. She just stood at the feet of the dragon, no emotion, calling no foul. The dragon, nostrils smoking, stood powerful, benevolent, and strong. No animosity existed between the two figures.

I did not realize it, but as I thought of these symbols, my body had moved quietly towards the kiosk. I bumped in it. My eyes shot open. I gazed into the empty kiosk, like my mind looked for reason in it to what was happening in my head or for a spot to cower and shield myself from this psychological and troubling tempest. What did all this mean?

Then the soothing, soft, and warm voice of the faceless woman spoke. My body relaxed, my mind void of fear, my soul encouraged to listen. She spoke only for thirty seconds, but the power of her words changed my life. Being alone for the time being was temporary, she began. I needed to be patient, to wait for a new opportunity to appear in a new form. The empty kiosk symbolized a clean slate, to have it filled with whatever my heart desired. The words of the faceless woman comforted me, guiding me to treat this moment to grow, to find my true self. She reminded me that being alone without me expressing anger, tension, fear, or anxiety on this train platform with an empty kiosk meant a safe zone and I was independent to explore what I was truly meant to do in life.

She said, “Accept the current situation, this transition, with acceptance, patience, calmness, and tranquility. A new vision will appear.”

“But what was the dragon all about?” I asked her.

“The dragon is your cleanser.”

“But it tried to burn you?”

“Its fire is a symbol to rebuild, to clear the path to allow you to look for new talents, tap into new desires you have not been able to find inside you or those that your mind has suppressed because of your unrelenting focus on your current career. And now, you have the chance to re-evaluate, not wallow in self-pity, or live with old excuses and say that is your life, which it is not. You have an inner compass to guide you and follow. The dragon is the protector of your inner sovereign, that internal sanctuary where all your suppressed dreams, desires, and talent live.”

A whistle blew, jolting me out of my mental experience. I blinked rapidly. My connecting train arrived on track three. I gathered my composure, and with slight embarrassment hoping nobody heard me talk to myself, I jogged over to the train, dressed in my original suit. As I took a seat on the train, I reflected on what I had just experienced. Talents. Passions. Desires.

Podcast recording has always attracted and motivated me, but I had the age-old excuse of having no time to devote to personal ambitions because of the demands of my current job. It was at that moment I looked up and noticed an advertisement for recording talent for a new agency that had just opened downtown. Could this be the revelation, the synchronous link between my unconscious world and my conscious about which the faceless woman – who was she? – was referring?

Fired from work. The dragon fire. All connected. A new path. Clearing the foundation so I could rebuild. The wisdom of the faceless, no, innocent woman who comforted me as I faced new challenges in life. I no longer had to live under the pressure of the shadows where the unknown lurked and threatened to consume my life. The symbol of the dragon meant that I was not to act like the dragon. Instead, it symbolized my need to persevere in the face of changes in life.

All I could do was smile. A new journey began as the doors to the tram closed.