(Sometime before the end of last year)
I entered the staff canteen and saw Chris*. With a plateful of hot food in front of him, he sat on his own at one of the tables. He was the only person in the room. Through the big window I saw a clear sky, the Millennium Stadium and a short stretch of the River Taff, struggling with a massive delivery of rain from the Brecon Beacons.
I said "Hi!" and started loading my plate with good things of the this planet prepared skilfully by our chef, or one of his assistants. Chris returned the greeting and carried on with his meal. I didn't often talk to him. No one did, for that matter. Chris had some developmental issues and wasn't very good at exchanges. But being polite, he didn’t like to let the little conversations he somehow managed die too abruptly, so he would repeat a sentence or phrase a few times, usually the last one he'd heard or said himself. Friendliness and warmth flowed freely out of him, so I always made a point of exchanging smiles and doing some small - and I mean really small - talk.
There was a good choice of food that day, as was on most days, actually. I went for a bright, quite random mixture, picking colours rather than tastes. I sat down some two tables away from Chris and smiled to him again. Then I started browsing through the newspaper I brought with me. He looked at me and said "Nice food". I thought it would be appropriate to wrap the conversation up with one more thing on my part. "There's a good choice here", I pointed to the buffet. Chris repeated "There's a good choice". And then after a moment again: "There's a good choice", and again: "There's a good choice" - the last one could as well have been a delicate echo that bounced against the walls of the small canteen. Suddenly a thrill went through me. As my words were repeated by this innocent man, I realised I'd sent them into the world and they affected it.
Now their echo thundered in my ears and my heart was pounding: I felt that even if I did or said nothing else in my life, I had left my mark. The wave I sent got picked up and was being re-broadcast into the Universe: There is a good choice... there's a good choice... there's a good choice...
