Excerpt from “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry” by Rachel Joyce

“Harold sat in silence.  The silver-haired gentleman was in truth nothing like the man Harold had first imagined him to be.  He was a chap like himself, with a unique pain; and yet there would be no knowing that if you passed him in the street, or sat opposite him in a cafe and did not share his teacake.  Harold pictured the gentleman on a station platform, smart in his suit, looking no different from anyone else.  It must be the same all over England.  People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters.  And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside.  The superhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday.  The loneliness of that.  Moved and humbled, he passed his paper napkin.”

 

From the book “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry”

~ by cjt on March 2, 2014.