Disdainful Glares and Averted Gazes

Illustration by Mark Long

December 2024

Today at a MAX train stop near my mother’s apartment, I saw a man smoking heroin for the first time since I was in those same shoes ten years ago. I wasn’t enticed or triggered. Instead, I watched with fixed eyes as he passed out over his tinfoil in slow motion. Wanting to help, but knowing firsthand that there was nothing I could do for him in this stage, or at that moment, I just quietly wept while a woman standing not far from me glared at him with disdain.

Last week I was in line at a convenience store, a few people behind a houseless man paying for a handful of items. The moment he left the counter, the clerk began animatedly spraying air freshener before he was even out the door. The woman who was behind him thanked the clerk vociferously and the man in front of me snickered. Yes, the gentleman possessed an unpleasant odor. But all I could do was stand there with a blank expression and a heavy heart over such surfacely innocuous yet underlyingly inhumane reactions to it.

I understand to some degree being put off, cautious, scared, offended, and even repulsed at times by certain segments of society that we would rather not deal with. I recall regularly losing my patience with drug addicts on the street when I was a tour guide. But that’s changed - sort of.

I’m sure that the woman at the train stop and the people in line at the store have all endured painful life chapters or been in the position of needing some help or understanding. Do we simply fail to recognize the severity of hardships that aren’t our own? It seems we often don’t readily recognize the plights of others as real or valid unless we have literally walked a mile in those shoes. And it seems even that’s not enough to do the trick sometimes.

You would think that the further one falls from grace, the greater the potential rebound in capacity for empathy. That perhaps it’s easier for those who have misplaced their own humanity a time or two, to recognize it in others. That should be me, but it’s not always the case. Besides, my misfortunes should not be a prerequisite for attaining such perspectives in the first place. I should be mature enough to apply known life lessons, values, and concepts without having to take the rides first.

Yet despite having punched a handful of E-tickets personally, I don’t always employ the level of understanding or empathy that I should. It seems the further away I get from my own falls and failures, the shorter my memory and the lesser my tolerance for others becomes.

I still tend to avoid eye contact or interactions with anybody sullenly holding a sign on a street corner. Sure, I didn’t join in on any of the glaring or snickering I recently witnessed. Perhaps only because I’ve been a full-fledged junkie and was once technically rendered homeless myself. And honestly, my outright aversion is hardly some sort of moral high ground. They’re human and deserve to be seen or acknowledged at the very least. I can do better. We all can.

I don’t know how, other than by actively keeping the Golden Rule right at the front of my conscious mind. But I was supposed to be doing that already. Try harder, I guess. I have no real answers or resolutions. I just don’t think any of us want to live through a life or in a world where indignance reigns because our humanity lost.