so I have this one colleague, right? I donât know him super well, but we work together on shift sometimes and heâs reliable, got his shit together, efficient and timely.
And heâs polite with the public, too. Says all the right things, smiles when appropriate, patient and helpful, would never step out of line. One hundred percent follows the rules to the letter, hands-off, no abusive language, no violence. Straight and narrow all the way.
And when I first met him, I was put off about how he talks about people. I still am, honestly. Itâs private and quiet and discrete, not where anyone could see or overhear, but he says things to me. âThat one got hit with the ugly stickâ. âHe looks fuckinâ handicappedâ. âLook at that crackheadâ. âMaybe Iâd feel bad for them if they got off their asses and got their lives togetherâ.
It started quite a few arguments between us, but it never changed that his ACTIONS were always fair and respectful, so I let it slide as one of those things you canât change about others and just kind of have to put up with. We work together fine, and I donât react to it anymore, and he treats people well.
One day he said he saw me buying a coffee for a homeless guy when I was off shift.
The guy in question was someone we both knew from work was a pain in the ass, high or drunk more often than not, criminal record a mile long, with the kind of mental health issues that arenât as sympathetic because they mostly just make him act like a violent asshole. Too ill to be prosecuted, to aggressive and unpredictable for a care aid and public housing, so he gets by stealing and shooting up and threatening anyone who tries to stop him.
Heâs an unhappy soul. There are very few places heâs welcome.
But I was buying myself a drink, and he was outside, and it was cold out, and out of uniform I know itâs an 80% chance heâll have no idea who I am or that he said heâd cut my head off last week, so I figured Iâd grab him a coffee. Double-double, cause sugar helps and Iâd seen him eat ice cream before so cream probably wouldnât hurt.
I handed it to him on my way out. Told him to stay safe. He took it. Didnât say thank-you, but I wasnât really expecting him to anyways. Iâd never spoken with him outside of an active conflict before, so I donât even know what heâd have sounded like not-angry and mostly-sober.
But anyway, apparently my colleague saw, and he asked why the hell Iâd waste the money.
I didnât know what to tell him. It was just two dollars. Iâd spent more than that on the second-hand bowl that had fallen off my dish rack and shattered the other night. And it was cold out, and the guy was probably banned from anywhere warm in town, and if he wanted something bad enough heâd probably just steal it anyways, and then itâs be someone elseâs problem. But mostly, he was just the kind of guy nobody is happy to see, who was welcome nowhere, and had nowhere to go, and maybe when youâre trapped in a life like that something small and decent doesnât come around very often.
I didnât know what to tell him. So I just said, âI felt like it.â
He rolled his eyes a bit, but didnât hassle me about it. I got the feeling he still thought I was being stupid or naive. He seems to think I donât understand how he world works, or how awful and heartless people can be.
I donât know why he thinks that. We work the same job, and weâve shared a lot about where weâve been. We both know how awful people can be.
But then maybe a month later he shows up for shift change. And when he does, he has this weird energy about him, like a little kid who just found their first rubikâs cube and hasnât figured out if they like it or not.
âI pulled a you,â he said, like he was making fun of himself.
I asked what he meant, what had happened.
He said heâd seen a guy, a different guy, another person on the street when we both saw all the time. âI went to grab lunch and he was there,â he said. âAnd you know, heâs got no money, heâs homeless, but he never causes trouble, never steals, doesnât show up drunk. So I figured, what the hell, and I covered his bill.â
He wasnât looking at me as he said it, just staring off with an odd energy. If it wasnât so subtle Iâd call it excitement, like little-kid excitement, but it was almost nothing. âI told âem not to say it was me. Didnât wanna have to talk to him. Thought itâd be weird.â
It was totally out of left-field. Completely against the image he projected of polite distance, judgemental side comments.
I asked him, âfeels good, huh?â
He shrugged, but it seemed like he was still thinking about it.
He still says unkind and hurtful things about people, though. But the other day he said something about how he didnât care about people, didnât care when the news said folks were dying of the flu, didnât get upset over strangers like that.
I said, âBut itâs sad, isnât it?â, and he shook his head. âYou canât care about everyone. That would be exhausting.â And I think thatâs when I figured it out.
We both do the same work. Weâve both come from similar places. And yet the way we feel about others is different.
This is a guess, but I donât think heâs a cruel or unkind person at heart. A guess, but I suspect that after seeing so much stupid, senseless cruelty⌠Je cares about people, but caring hurts. Caring means you can be let down, disappointed, fucked over. Caring about everyone means suffering when they suffer, and thatâs a lot of pain for one person to handle. And I suspect that maybe when he says cruel things, when he says he doesnât care, itâs because heâs scared of his own empathy. That if he truly let himself love everyone, he couldnât survive the hurt of it.
Which is purer, in a way, than my own sort of caring. My caring, I think, is much more selfish.
Iâve been hurt too. Iâve seen bad things, too. And when I closed myself off like that, I became a cold and bitter person, and the colder and more bitter you are, the colder and more bitter others are back, until all you can see is the worst in everything and almost nothing can drag you out of the pit youâve dug yourself into.
I think heâs cold because heâs afraid of love. I think he knows that loving others makes you vulnerable regardless of your actions, so he does what he can to dislike people before he becomes attached.
I think I love because if I didnât, Iâd hate. Iâd hate everybody. Iâd hate people I care about.
I think I need to love everybody, care about everybody, at least a little tiny bit, because if any single person was unworthy then anyone could be unworthy, and how on earth would I know?
The man I bought coffee for didnât bother us that day. Didnât bother us for a few weeks. I try not to hope the two things are related.
Another guy I knew from the street got clean. Got a house. Was going back to school, before he fell off the wagon.
Heâs on the street again, now.
Seeing him back out there hurts.
It probably wouldnât hurt if I didnât give a shit, if I wasnât kind of excited for him, if I wasnât still kind of hoping heâd get clean again.
He has no idea who I am, though. We only met once, maybe four years ago now.
Iâm still hoping Iâll see him around town again soon, standing upright without the black stains on his fingers, smiling like he was when he came by with his social worker.
I think most people have the impulse to care. I think the choices they make donât reflect their capacity for love so much as they indicate what scares us more- pain and power and how we let it in.
We have shift change again twenty minutes.
Iâm not sure what else to say.
Would you rather be stabbed in the back, or buried alive?
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