There are quite a lot of great people that I have met during my recent three years in Scotland. Many of them have become my friends that I believe I will never forget in the rest of my life. Agnostic—or, to be very honest, atheist as me, the mere existence of these people are the only reason why I can think of a slightest chance that God exists. What I have no doubt about, though, is that I am extremely lucky to have met these people, something that I cannot explain scientifically, something that I believe it is all down to my good karma I have accumulated in my previous lives. I should probably write a blog post about these lovely people, to say that I respect and love them a lot as a friend, that I want to thank them wholeheartedly.

But I am writing a story about a—I believe—lonely man that I encounter this year. It is not because he is greater than my those lovely people and friends; but I have listened to him for while, and somehow through our chats and his stories, I think I have grown up a bit more as a whole person. I admit though, that what he had told me was probably no more than some cliché that has been pictured somewhere else in literature, films, radio stories, or simply some gossips that my readers may have read a lot on social networks or internet forums. But I was connected to those stories; I had acquired a feeling during those stories that ‘here are merely two equal human beings, connected and sharing the very true of them,’ as if a breeze playing with bamboo leaves, moonlight shading on a wet stone, showing pure beauty that naturally can shake people’s hearts. Not about him, or me, or what we had told each other, but the mere human connection that many may unfortunately find none in their lives.

His name is Phil. Or shall I say that is how he is called, and quite embarrassingly, I have never got to know his first name fully, let alone his family name. But I am quite sure he is British, as he really says ‘sorry’ quite a lot, to the extent that I am often puzzled by his ‘sorries’. He said he is 29 this year—which is older than me—but as far as I can tell, he looks and feels quite young.

I first met Phil in a café in Edinburgh. The time was 4:56 PM on a typical Scottish dreich day, when I was just back to the city after a tiring day, looking for a croissant and a cup of hot chocolate to give me a bit energy for getting home. His colleague, seeing me attempting to go into the café, told me that they were to close. As I was about to leave, Phil asked me at the bar, ‘Hey man. What’d you like?’ His colleague gave a cold-as-the-weather-face to him, and he was just smiling, waiting for my answer.

‘Um, is it ok?’

‘No problem mate.’

‘Right…then I want a cup of hot chocolate and… Do you have any food left?’

‘Let me check…We’ve only have a carrot cake. You alright with that? It’s good.’

‘Um… Right. Ok. I’ll go for that. Thank you very much.’

‘No worries.’

Steam came out of the coffee machine, making a loud noise in the empty room.

‘Sorry. Take away please.’

The noise stopped. ‘Of course mate. We’re not going to keep you anyway.’ He grinned a bit, ‘You look bad.’

‘Yeah. I’m just back and very tired.’

‘You went on a travel?’ He kept working, not looking at me.

‘Not really. Just some workshop in St Andrews, and, well, interestingly, I was also making beverage for people. Um, it’s actually V60 and specialty coffee.’

‘Oh, good one. We don’t do it here but I like V60.’ As he was taking out and packing the cake, ‘you student?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Are you a STUDENT?’

‘Yes. I’m a postgraduate student in philosophy at St Andrews.’

‘Interesting. What’s your area?’

‘Nowadays I mainly work on philosophy of human rights, which is…’ assuming that he knows nothing about philosophy, like many people I have encountered so far, ‘you can say moral or political philosophy.’

He smiled, adding some hot milk to the chocolate, ‘I used to study philosophy as well.’

‘Oh really?’ I was delighted, ‘What did you… I mean, what’s your area?’

‘Well, my master thesis was on semantics and logic… (he put the cap on the cup) here at Edinburgh.’

‘That’s cool,’ I said, and smiled, ‘um, s…’

‘Here you go. Hot chocolate… Carrot cake… Six twenty.’

‘Right…’ I paid in a bit clumsy way.

‘Thank you very much! Right. We’ll close now. Hope you rest well tonight.’

‘Hopefully. I’ll sleep at nine probably.’

‘Hehe. Good for you.’

‘Have a nice evening.’

‘You too.’

That was how I first met Phil, and, as far as I can recall, the first and last time we talked about something about ‘professional philosophy’. It is interesting that we have never talked about serious philosophy in our later chats. But perhaps that was why he was able to talk about something mattered—perhaps still matters—to him, something that I connected with as a common and similar human being.

It was after a month, on another cold evening that I met Phil again.

Last modified on 2018-07-21