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Lesson Without Words

Pretending is not there won't make it go away.

By Myra MintyPublished 7 years ago 3 min read
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In the midst of a cold winter night, on Christmas Eve, he sat against a wall in Manhattan's Fifty-third Street in what seemed a complete different time and place. There were no street lights where we were parked and would have completely missed him if it weren’t for our wandering eyes and mere chance. My glance traveled through the foggy window from the backseat of our car; I squinted but there was only darkness, I finally managed to recognize the shape of a human figure wearing a coat that would only give warmth on a blossoming spring day. I looked ahead as the bright Christmas lights illuminated the New York City streets. I could feel the excitement, joy and the grin growing on my face but if I turned back to look at him there would only be sadness and chills taking joy's place. He didn’t move an inch, you would question if he was even alive. Better yet why wasn’t he in a shelter on such a cold night?

There are many homeless men and women I have seen on the train, streets and other places but there was something different about this man. The busy people walked by, with long wool coats, nice hair styles and briefcases, some looked at their watches but not once did any of them look down to see him. Similarly, he did not even give the slightest response to the people walking by. He did not put his hand out to beg for money or even look up.

The howling wind outside was unbearable, the type of wind that enters your being, making your teeth chatter and dream about the warmth of your blanket along with a cup of hot chocolate. The type of wind that stings your face, your nose, ears, toes and makes your eyes cry for no reason. Yet, he did not move, with a hood on his head, hands along his sides and knees to his chest he sat on the cold and hard sidewalk. As I looked up through the front mirror of my car and into the long street, I saw the lights ever so gently floating ahead of me, as I was drawn and hypnotized by them I was simply captivated by the charm of their glittering luster just as a silly fly is towards the hot brilliant light of a bulb that leads towards its death.

My lanky frame sat within the comforts of my car, placing my icy fingers on the soft fabric inside my coat searching for any warmth I could find, I sat back and sighed a long breath of steamy air. The bitter cold, like a cruel invisible ghost, swirled and swooshed, wrapping itself around my ankle, up and around my spine and into my skull.

I raised my gaze and looked through the window once more. I slid back and peered through, as the engine turned on and we were finally off. I bit my lip and looked away. I pondered about what will tomorrow bring for this person. I so badly wanted to forget what I experienced. The uncomfortable feeling that there was a human, a fellow human, who was sitting almost lifeless. The monstrous uncertainty that this man stirred within me made me look into myself. Dare I say, I didn’t want to feel his pain, the creeping undesired sensation of loneliness and dark hopelessness. The eerie stillness of a moment of truth, a check point, if you will.

As the thoughts ran through my mind, with each and crashing wave a confession emerged, the surfacing of the realization that I was a bystander who didn’t want to feel things in the guise of a lovely well-composed citizen who understood that this homeless man needed to pull himself up by the bootstraps. I was guilty to admit that I was a bystander who was afraid to acknowledge the raw truth of the matter, to really take a good look. Pretending that isn’t there, or that it doesn’t exist is not going to make it go away. The truth is just as there are unresolved affairs that need dire attention in society, such as homelessness, similarly, there may be little state of affairs within our being—muted state of affairs that have been made invisible, which are holding us captive. Deep reckoning maybe just the thing that needs to be done, from a macro level down to the subtlest level of our very selves.

humanity
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