“Sit.” 

“What?” 

“Sit,” said the man with the statue-like posture on the bench. 

“Why?” responded the young jogger merely trying to go about his day. 

“Could you stop asking so many questions.” 

“But I don’t know who you are!” 

“You could.” 

“How would I know to trust you?” 

“You wouldn’t.” 

*** 

Twenty-one year old Fabian Ferros was following his daily routine to a T—including drinking actual tea—and left his apartment to go for his early morning jog near the seaside park. 

Through his hundreds of mornings, he’d always seen old people sit on the benches and relax, and sometimes they’d even smile at him and he’d smile back. 

However, this time as he was maintaining his pace as he wanted to get back and take a nap, he noticed an old man with cold eyes and a grimace. Fabian liked to think that he gave back to his community so, for some reason, he slowed down and asked the man if he was alright. And then the man asked Fabian to sit and after a moment of hesitation and questions, he sat. 

For a moment, an awkward silence filled the void of their empty conversation. Fortunately, Fabian saw something that intrigued him—Fabian caught a hint of something that he couldn’t describe nor had he’d never seen before in the old man’s pupils. 

The old man finally turned his head towards Fabian and murmured, his voice course and stone soft, weathered by time.

“If love is like the night, then let me see the stars.”

For a moment, his words hung dry in the air—waiting to be washed—carrying a boulder that Fabian vaguely understood, though he couldn’t quite grapple with them in their entirety. 

As Fabian closely read the man like a scripture, he noticed vulnerability behind his rocky facade. There was a story there, written between the wrinkles and woven through his cracked napalm lips. 

Even though only a few minutes had passed, Fabian felt a lifetime of thoughts hit him. Was love merely about romance or platonic gestures towards people he knew? Or was it about the willingness to sit with a stranger and just talk to them, whatever that entailed. 

The old man’s gaze eroded like a gem, underscoring a certain tenderness that changed his countenance. 

“You asked why you should trust a stranger,” he said. “Trust ain’t about knowing everythin’; sometimes it’s about believing that helpin’ someone can help you too.” 

As he eventually parted ways with the old man, Fabian carried a new feeling in his soul.

It wasn’t always about seeing the known. It was about heeding in the very possibility of risks and taking solace in conquering them. 

And if love truly was like the night sky, then Fabian understood that the small things in life mattered and healed his conscience, like stopping for a moment to talk to a friendly stranger, maybe even making his day.