Compassion
Read-Along Song: Ayahuasca by Vancouver Sleep Clinic.
I tapped the caps lock button on my keyboard several times, trying to gather what I was thinking about a second before. It was an epiphany of sorts, which was all I could remember. But between the time of realization and booting up an archaic laptop, the feeling was gone. Vanished, as quick as it came on. The phrase “flash of inspiration” can be so uniquely frustrating. I closed the laptop, sighing under my breath so that the other metros wouldn’t hear me.
Outside was a man who appeared homeless. Or at least, he didn’t have anywhere to be, he stood there with another man in a wheelchair. The two of them were hollering in laughter so loud that it crept into the café I was sitting in. I was staring through the window at them, watching their swaying and breathes misting in the frigid air. It was December in Boston, but these two had no care in the world that they were potentially freezing. They laughed, holding lit cigarettes close to their lips. I glanced at the sidewalk, scanning for a cup full of change or a cardboard sign. I found one, but once I read it, I could feel the workaholic slither beneath me. Something happened to me, and for once, I can’t put into words what.
“Try your hardest to be your best.”
I read the words over and over, examining the red, blue, and green marker it was written with. It was bubble lettered with relatively neat handwriting. It’s better than what I could have done with my shaky hand. He wasn’t asking for money, he was asking for us to be better. That’s probably when it happened, that epiphany I just lost. I had come here to write, to convince myself that I was worth something in between the lines of people and the scent of factory coffee. I was a dreamer pretending to be an industrialist. That’s how I felt walking through the door, but I can’t for the life of me remember what that man with the sign made me feel. He was looking back at me now, but I didn’t look away. I held eye contact with him for a moment, emotionless. Right then, the noise disappeared, and thoughts weren’t clouding my vision like they usually do. I was seeing him for who he was. A kind man, his eyes were a warm dark brown like they had seen decades of cold and had to radiate heat themselves.
What a tragedy we created for him. What a shame I was clutching beneath my chest. On the rare occasion, my parents and siblings would go out to dinner downtown, we would see plenty of men like him. I can’t describe them because my parents told me not to look. They said to keep my eyes ahead or at the ground. I listened and craned my neck forward. The truth was I had no money, I was a child after all, but I wanted to give them something anyway. I just didn’t know what. I didn’t think my parents were evil for instructing their children to ignore strays, plenty of other families were like that. Even at school, our speakers would tell us that even if we did give them money, they’d likely use it for drugs and be worse off. We would be extending their addiction, they said. And we believed them.
So all these years I lived like that. Looking the other way but feeling ashamed for being feed and warmly clothed. There were close calls where homeless men shouted at me to take out my AirPods to hear them beg. But I was trained better than that. Looking ahead, and if not that, looking at my smartphone. Something hot would well up into my neck whenever that happened. It was beyond shame; it was the negligence of obligation.
But staring at this man, I felt none of that. I didn’t blink or shudder at the long time we were spending keeping our eyes locked. Nothing was welling up in me. I didn’t feel ashamed for staring, even though I was raised to believe it was rude to. Why was it impolite to look at someone anyway? People don’t like to be seen? My thoughts were blank, and I wanted to thank the man for it. He was the first to look away, drawing his cigarette to his mouth and taking a puff. His disabled friend must have cracked a good joke because he convulsed in laughter so intense it shook him into a cough. Those were the best types of laughs in my mind. The ones that take you by surprise, something your body wasn’t expecting.
That’s when I noticed. He looked familiar. No, he wasn’t someone I knew, but he had a striking resemblance to a person in my life. My brain kick-started again, sputtering like an engine fresh from the winter. I didn’t have to search hard. This man looked just like my father.
The hotness I had dismissed rose up through my esophagus, except this time it wasn’t shame that suffocated me. It was sadness. A childlike pain entered me, a sense of unfairness that kids practice time and time again in front of their parents. I should know, I did it all the time.
“But that’s not fair!” I’d say. Sometimes my mother would smirk and had a kneejerk response.
“Life’s not fair.”
She was right, but as a kid, I’m not so sure I needed to know that. At least, not back then. We would scream and scream as kids to get our way, but our parents were good at making sure we were raised with discipline and understanding. We called them “manners.” I hated those lessons the most. I wanted to eat my food with my hands over forks and knives. I wanted to run inside the house and play tag with my brother. I wanted to draw on the walls. Stare at people in the restaurant. Laugh too loud in public. I was throwing a ball around the basement when my father came down and caught it. He balanced it on his pointer finger like a star basketball player.
“What did I say about playing with this inside?”
“Not to,” I looked at the carpet like I was trained to. He tapped my head, lifting my chin up to meet his ice-blue gaze. Though his pupils were frosty, the smile beneath them made me warm and embarrassed.
“Someday you’ll have a house of your own, and then you’ll understand.” He hugged me, and I wrapped my little arms around his waist. I wanted to reply but held myself back, eating my words. He and I went upstairs for dinner with the rest of the family. I was so happy then. Everything was so perfect. The biggest troubles in our lives were taking care of the house and not offending others. So simple, and yet complex to be a polite person at the same time. I remembered what I wanted to say to my father. When he told me why I couldn’t play in the house, I almost said,
“I don’t want to understand.”
At first, I had to constrain myself, but nowadays I didn’t have to. It was bred into me, my laughs hushed on the train, and eyes tied to the asphalt. All of that washed away looking into that homeless man’s eyes. Though they were different colors, the pupils were the same in shape. Soft on the outskirts yet hardened in the middle with years of discomfort. I’ve called this man homeless, but I didn’t know his story. He may look disheveled, but who was I to decide that? I missed the days when all I had to worry about was getting caught by my parents when I dropped a plate. I missed when they would shush me during church service. I missed the school lunches, the field trips, the playdates. I missed when I wasn’t fighting myself when I didn’t mistake kindness with manners. When I didn’t struggle to be authentic, to live in the present. That man had cured me of my adulthood for a second. Rent wasn’t on my mind, or my job, or my relationships. This was it, just me looking at him and him looking at me. It was nice.
I packed up my things, clasped my laptop under my arm, and swung the café door open into the cold. He and his friend stopped chatting, smiling at me.
My parents raised me right I think. They taught me to be respectful, to be understanding of others. But that got warped over time and over loss after loss. The manners I had learned have betrayed me, convincing me that I was somehow supposed to be inhuman. And that day, just for once, I wasn’t fighting myself to enjoy the company of someone else. I remembered what I had lost. Kindness was returned.
