Seeing

today, our daily blog
is from VIG

i shall stop this morning
and look around as this
blog shows me the reason
i should~~

Seeing

by VIG

In the beautiful west coast city, I enter the area that is called the Downtown Eastside. It is a part of the city that the wealthy talk about with unbridled disdain and disgust in their privileged voices. It is the place where people go who have lost sight of childhood dreams and who have found poverty and addiction in their place. It is not a “nice” part of the city and the “nice” people of the city are warned to stay away. I keep my eyes down as I walk to the bus that I pray will take me out of there quickly and without incident. I walk as if I am not there and hope that I am not approached. The masses struggle by, carrying with them shelter and worldly possessions in shopping carts and garbage bags. A woman in a doorway lies blanketed by empty bottles and a man staggers toward me with his hand out. My eyes drill into the sidewalk and I rush by without raising my gaze from the concrete. I disregard any attempts that he is making to ask me for the help he needs to survive the day - in whatever way that might be. Through fear I ignore him and continue on, then I hear a voice plead “Why won’t anyone look me in the eye anymore. Aren’t I a human?” That voice stops me in my tracks. Perhaps it is a line that he has found successful in “guilting” people into giving. Or perhaps I am the straw that breaks the camels back. Another person he passes on the street that he determines, by whatever criteria, could help him and could see him, but who is choosing instead to render him invisible. I realize that I, who consider myself to be a caring person, am fooling myself. I am caring when I feel safe and am in the “deserving” part of town. In an instant and without looking, I have judged and determined that the person with his hand out is a threat and a social problem and thereby worthy of being passed by. I go back to him and give him the five dollars that I would have spent at the first Starbucks that I saw while riding on the bus. I look him in the eye and smile. He says thank you and God bless like he really means it. I continue down the street and I raise my eyes to see what I have been missing. And I smile. I smile at every human that I see. The response that I receive in return will stagger and affect me for many years. People I come across on that street of misplaced dreams seem genuinely shocked that a passerby is making eye contact and is smiling. And every person smiles back at me. From the words of the man with the outstretched hand and in those shy, authentic smiles, I learn to lift my eyes from the pavement and to really see “the human” in us all.