I responded to his curse with a spiritual blessing

Originally appeared on spirituality.com

On what should have been a quiet, routine commute, a verbal battering caught me by surprise.

I boarded the train as I do most mornings and found one empty seat between two large men. The guy next to the window was sleeping. His bag was slipping off his knee and into the seat where I was hoping to sit, so I gently nudged it back onto his lap and squashed down in the seat next to him.

As he felt his bag move, he abruptly awoke and turned on me with vitriol that erupted into more four-letter words than I knew could be strung together in one breath.

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