so I have this one colleague, right? I donāt know him super well, but we work together on shift sometimes and heās reliable, got his shit together, efficient and timely.
And heās 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. Itās private and quiet and discrete, not where anyone could see or overhear, but he says things to me. āThat one got hit with the ugly stickā. āHe looks fuckinā handicappedā. āLook at that crackheadā. āMaybe Iād feel bad for them if they got off their asses and got their lives togetherā.
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 canāt change about others and just kind of have to put up with. We work together fine, and I donāt 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 arenāt 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.
Heās an unhappy soul. There are very few places heās welcome.
But I was buying myself a drink, and he was outside, and it was cold out, and out of uniform I know itās an 80% chance heāll have no idea who I am or that he said heād cut my head off last week, so I figured Iād grab him a coffee. Double-double, cause sugar helps and Iād seen him eat ice cream before so cream probably wouldnāt hurt.
I handed it to him on my way out. Told him to stay safe. He took it. Didnāt say thank-you, but I wasnāt really expecting him to anyways. Iād never spoken with him outside of an active conflict before, so I donāt even know what heād have sounded like not-angry and mostly-sober.
But anyway, apparently my colleague saw, and he asked why the hell Iād waste the money.
I didnāt know what to tell him. It was just two dollars. Iād 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 heād probably just steal it anyways, and then itās be someone elseās 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 youāre trapped in a life like that something small and decent doesnāt come around very often.
I didnāt know what to tell him. So I just said, āI felt like it.ā
He rolled his eyes a bit, but didnāt hassle me about it. I got the feeling he still thought I was being stupid or naive. He seems to think I donāt understand how he world works, or how awful and heartless people can be.
I donāt know why he thinks that. We work the same job, and weāve shared a lot about where weāve 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 rubikās cube and hasnāt figured out if they like it or not.
āI pulled a you,ā he said, like he was making fun of himself.
I asked what he meant, what had happened.
He said heād seen a guy, a different guy, another person on the street when we both saw all the time. āI went to grab lunch and he was there,ā he said. āAnd you know, heās got no money, heās homeless, but he never causes trouble, never steals, doesnāt show up drunk. So I figured, what the hell, and I covered his bill.ā
He wasnāt looking at me as he said it, just staring off with an odd energy. If it wasnāt so subtle Iād call it excitement, like little-kid excitement, but it was almost nothing. āI told āem not to say it was me. Didnāt wanna have to talk to him. Thought itād be weird.ā
It was totally out of left-field. Completely against the image he projected of polite distance, judgemental side comments.
I asked him, āfeels good, huh?ā
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 didnāt care about people, didnāt care when the news said folks were dying of the flu, didnāt get upset over strangers like that.
I said, āBut itās sad, isnāt it?ā, and he shook his head. āYou canāt care about everyone. That would be exhausting.ā And I think thatās when I figured it out.
We both do the same work. Weāve both come from similar places. And yet the way we feel about others is different.
This is a guess, but I donāt think heās a cruel or unkind person at heart. A guess, but I suspect that after seeing so much stupid, senseless crueltyā¦ 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 thatās a lot of pain for one person to handle. And I suspect that maybe when he says cruel things, when he says he doesnāt care, itās because heās scared of his own empathy. That if he truly let himself love everyone, he couldnāt 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.
Iāve been hurt too. Iāve 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 youāve dug yourself into.
I think heās cold because heās 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 didnāt, Iād hate. Iād hate everybody. Iād 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 didnāt bother us that day. Didnāt 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.
Heās on the street again, now.
Seeing him back out there hurts.
It probably wouldnāt hurt if I didnāt give a shit, if I wasnāt kind of excited for him, if I wasnāt still kind of hoping heād get clean again.
He has no idea who I am, though. We only met once, maybe four years ago now.
Iām still hoping Iāll 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 donāt 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.
Iām not sure what else to say.
Would you rather be stabbed in the back, or buried alive?
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