under the human influence

It was lunchtime on another wild and hectic workday.  In a dizzying flurry of my own self-centered thoughts I rushed back to the office, my gourmet take-out salad piled high with bacon, blue cheese, red onions and the sweetest little grape tomatoes.   A few hundred feet in front of me, I saw an old homeless man and felt my tough safeguard go up.  I thought about the expensive pants I happened to be wearing and a numbing mist of guilt instantly coated me.  I prepared to pass him, making no eye contact, and as our paths crossed I heard the most gentle and helpless voice say “excuse me?”  From beneath the grime, came an almost angelic desperate whisper of hope.  I felt my heart sink, wishing I could do something, but I kept my head down and kept walking… across the street, up the stairs, across the room to my desk.  I sat down and I wept.

I thought to myself “when did you become so heartless?”, “why didn’t you give that poor man your lunch?”, “would it have killed you to give him a few dollars?” “he must be so hungry, and cold” … the berating inner monologue goes on.  When did I stop believing that every human being deserves the respect of a smile and a “hello?”

I work all day (and sometimes all night) trying to make “things” better, more usable, more pleasurable, more entertaining, more engaging, so that “poor” white-collar folks like myself don’t have to “suffer” through a mediocre or even appalling user experience … with a website that they’re probably interacting with at their cushy job, or on their couch or in their well-lit home office.

I realized that I spend my life trying to surround myself with beauty because the ugly is just too hard to see.

When I was pregnant with our first child, I couldn’t bear to watch the news or even hear about the tragic headlines in casual conversation.  Everywhere it seemed, someone was being killed, someone was sick or dying, some innocent percent had been shot or robbed or injured.  Although it’s been years since that pregnancy and the first signs of my maternal instincts to protect her from the uncomfortable and sickening events around us, I still try to shelter myself from the terror of the world in which so many people live.

Lately, I have been unable to escape the headlines.  There has become such a long list of people to hold in my heart and to remember.  Earthquakes, hurricane force winds, power outages, illnesses, fires, orphans… it is staggering.  When I really stop to think about it, I find that I can’t, I shut down.  I notice that I carefully expose myself to this unbelievable heartbreak in tiny doses.  Little quarter-teaspoons of breaking news is all I can handle.

Perhaps I am weak, emotionally fragile, or perhaps I am just less numb and more susceptible to the elements that make me human?

What I wrestle with is how can *I* affect change.  I feel like trying to help all those who need helping would be akin to taking a thimbleful of water out of the ocean.  But I am trying to approach the world and all its troubles in more morsel-sized style.  Perhaps if I can be a part of one person’s solution, even in a small way, that will sustain me, then I can build momentum and be encouraged to do more.

As I forge ahead in my work and my personal and spiritual lives, I am ever-conscious that emotions, meaning and human connections are the essence, and using them for good is my reason for being.

Baby steps, indeed.