I rode my bike the other day to get to an event for one of Barack Obama’s former communications directors. The weather was good for riding a bike in that it was a cold morning at just around 35 degrees. I was on my fixed gear that day and pumping up a major hill at about the same speed as an electric bike. I got to my turn and made it when I saw on the side of the street and on some concrete steps to a residential complex a slumping figure draped with a blanket as if to create a makeshift tent for themselves. It was a cold morning and the curve in their back suggested they were nearly passed out and beyond that casual rest when you are trying to catch your breath. And they were in the shade and I could see the purple of their ankles as I rode on by.
It took a block for me to process what it was I saw, so I turned around and hoped that what I found wouldn’t be a dead body. And as I approached I asked if this person was ok. And they were completely lucid and clear and responded that they were just waking up. Waking up, I thought. In that cold on that busy street. I asked if he wanted some coffee and he said he’d like that and I asked how he took it. “Cream and Sugar,” he said. And so I went to the gas station and came back and gave this man his coffee and about $25.
He was beyond appreciative and called me sir and thanked me. But what really marked the moment, however, was when he said, “you are the only person that’s acknowledged me.” I told him it was alright and to be safe and I rode on.
And I thought about that moment and have been thinking about that moment for a while. He was so deferential to me, which bothered me. Some part of me wanted to raise him up and hold him and tell him “I am not sir to you.” The other part that bothered me was someone acknowledging his existence meant so much to him, as if to say, “you are real. I see you. I’m not ignoring you.” And so on.
That man’s situation is something I don’t like in this world because it is so needless and so unnecessary. We have all the resources to fix it, but we don’t. And somehow we’ve normalized this pattern of suffering such that this man was so used to being invisible. We’ve normalized not seeing. And still, there is so much more I’m trying to figure out on this one.
I am me 