Gratitude 32

It`s too easy to judge others, you know, especially when we already know absolute squat about them.  This afternoon I noticed a couple of street homeless looking guys seated on park benches for a toke with their big plastic bags full of empties and my first reaction was, what a couple of losers.  Then there were a half dozen tech yuppies, all nattily dressed young men in their early thirties with neatly trimmed beards coming up the sidewalk each carrying a paper coffee cup.  So, those squeaky clean little success stories were all set to add to the landfill and do their share to help further wreck the environment, but the two guys recycling waste? I was all set to call them a couple of losers.  Uh-huh.

And really, how would I rate?  An old man living in social housing working a low wage job with people suffering from mental health issues and barely recovered from some of my own?  Well, I don`t use paper cups.  I always have my coffee seated in the cafe, in a ceramic mug.  It helps save the environment while allowing me the slow motion pleasure of a leisurely cup of joe in a peaceful café with my sketchbook.

I have several things to be thankful for here:

1. That I was given that quick reality check about not judging people by their appearance.

2. That I work in meaningful, socially redemptive employment.

3. That I don't waste paper or plastic containers.

4. That I understand what quality of life means.

Yesterday I commented on the hoards of dumbasses out on the streets downtown.  In public masses the collective IQ tends to lower to the double digits or less.  But I often wonder about what these people are really like.  I found myself fighting against the anxiety and stress of the crowd and refused to give in to the bad feelings.  I made every effort, as difficult as it was, to try to see persons, individuals in the crowd and to gain some sense of each one as a person with worth and value for their simple and wonderful humanity.

I find that increasingly I have the feeling with strangers that I already know them.  I don't know where this comes from, and I certainly can't clairvoyantly read their minds or their lives.  I simply understand that these are all individuals with lives, problems, triumphs, beautiful qualities and destructive traits.  I try to understand that each person not only has a story, but is a story, a walking novel and I feel honoured to be able to catch a glimpse of perhaps but one page, or even a single sentence or phrase.