I was coming up out of the subway yesterday in the rain, at the corner of 60th & Lexington. I didn't have an umbrella, so when I saw a guy selling them there for $5, I ducked under an awning and began fishing for my money.
As I'm going through my wallet looking for a five, rifling through a few new $20 bills fresh from the ATM, a guy approached me asking for money. I kind of tried to ignore him, but he pulled out his wallet and showed me a card indicating that he was an ex-con.
Honestly, I don't know for sure if my empathy kicked in before or after he told me he was a convicted muderer. I don't think I actually felt threatened...other than being close to me, and tell me he killed somebody (he explained why), what was there to fear? He was asking for money, nothing more. He told me he's trying to get his life back together, and needed some cash.
Normally, walking around New York, you can get asked for money on just about every street corner. Typically, you don't really make eye contact, and that dehumanizes the "beggar" (not really sure what else to call the person asking for money). In dehumanizing them, it makes it easier to ignore them, and their plight, and get from point A to point B. The difference here was that I was listening. I was listening, and interacting with somebody that I acknowledged as another human being.
But, after listening, I looked into this guys eyes. I stared in there for a second, as I was thinking. I wanted to see what was really going on. And then, I peeled off a twenty, and handed it to him, kept my eyes locked on his, and told him to "do the right thing". He said he would, thanked me, and moved on.
So, what was the lesson that I learned?
It's not that I should give $20 to everybody on the street that asked for money. If I did that, I'd never be able to leave my apartment.
And, the lesson is not that I should always carry an umbrella when there is rain in the forecast. Although I have known that for a long time, if it's not raining when I first go out, I don't take an umbrella.
So, what was the lesson?
I remember reading a long time ago that most of us use the same defense mechanism. If we don't really acknowledge a problem, we can make believe it doesn't exist. Don't look in the eyes of a beggar, and they're not really in need. Don't think about the homeless people you see, or people that are sick, or even puppies and kittens getting killed in the pound. And, if we don't really ponder it, and acknowledge it on some level, it's easy for us to go on about our lives.
On the other hand, if we were to really stop and think about all the problems and trouble and pain and suffering in the world, it would be difficult to funciton. We might become paralyzed, and too focused on the problems to be at all productive.
As a New Yorker, I think it's easy to shut those things out so much that you can become uncaring and unfeeling. After all, we all have our own probelems, right? That guy was broke, and all, but I was getting rained on! And, there was probably somebody else on that street with chapped lips, and maybe somebody else who might have lost $12,000 that day in the market off their $3,000,000 retirement portfolio .
So, while we can't always be caught up in all the troubles of the world, it might be useful and humbling to think about other people's problems every once in a while, and allow ourselves to feel for them, and empathize with them, and get in touch with those feelings, and maybe even do something about it.
Then, we can get back to worrying about the weekend golf forecast, our dinner reservations, and all of our other "important" problems.
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