A man was walking down the street as I pulled up to my house. I recognized him, but I don’t know his name. I’ve seen him for years hanging out on the corner of Seneca Street and Duerstein, but never talked to him in the few times I passed him on foot. Torn jeans, unkempt beard — I assume he’s homeless or seriously impoverished. Plodding along, he just looked … tired.
My immediate thought was embarrassment. Here I was, bringing home over $20 worth of McDonald’s meals. I felt like getting out of my car at that point would be an unnecessary slight. What if he hadn’t eaten today? Or yesterday? I paused, almost in tears. I grabbed just the drinks — I couldn’t carry it all anyway. By the time I got back to the car, I decided to give him my half of the food (the other half being for my wife, and we’re both under the weather right now). He was already turning the corner and gone.
Have I become a bleeding-heart {insert slight here}? Or was this my humanity slipping through a break in the shield of apathy and resignation our entire society seems to demand? I am so exhausted from ignoring the pain and injustices around me. For most, such things are just on the news, and we honestly don’t care what happens to millions of people we don’t see as our tribe — or responsibility. We find ways to justify mass incarceration for petty crimes, or excuses why people can’t feed their children, or shouldn’t be our neighbor. Even genocides are abstract history in the past, and thought experiments at best in the present. Such evil isn’t real to us; we can’t accept it’s really REAL.
In an already over-policed society, the head of our Federal government has now decided to “fix” the homeless problem for cities they feel demand attention. Is that what the military is for now? Does anyone even bother to care, except to sigh in relief that some uncomely stranger won’t bother them for change? I’ve seen comments hoping it happens in their city. Forget the warnings of history or the facts of poverty — we JUST DON’T CARE.
Would caring about so many people and so much hurt and death break our hearts?
Yes.
Is it worth it? What’s the alternative? Hard-heartedness and regret in some afterlife? Those calling themselves Christian should have an answer as to what we are called to do. Any being capable of empathy and sympathy should know as well. But that doesn’t seem to matter enough.
I want to hurt, to feel. I’d rather be heartbroken a million times than feel as little as I do when life is “business as usual” for most of us. That burger tasted like it usually did, I suppose, but it wasn’t the same. Maybe we need to feel some amount of this at every meal, knowing someone is hungry not far away.
In some strange way, I’m thankful I can still feel. I most certainly am not any more righteous and have no desire to wear it on my sleeve for social-justice bragging rights.
No, it’s like the first time I fell in love. It was after high school graduation, and I had spent the Summer with a couple of friends, one of which I really fell for. I remember when the reqality hit me. I had just dropped her off at her parents’ house. The near-sunset sun suddenly erupted in epic beams through the clouds, as if they were shining as a personal message. I somehow knew it was unrequited and not meant to be. But I prayerfully thanked G-d right then and there for the experience of feeling what I felt.
The pain is the blessing. It makes no sense, yet it is a spiritual truth I cannot deny. It won’t amount to more than a bleeding heart without acting on it, but it’s a start.
I sincerely wish we all could feel that pain a bit more often.