I was thinking last week on my way home from school about how sometimes we are so engrossed in what is going on with ourselves that we're too selfish to look around at others and I probably would have never taken the time to quit thinking about myself if this hadn't happened...
I had just left my World Civ II class last Tuesday and I was leaving school to go meet Amber for all-you-can-eat pancakes at IHOP! Yum! But as I was walking down the hall I got so distracted. There was a young guy standing in the hall with four or five other guys and they were all talking. The youngest of the group was probably 20 or a little older while the others were maybe in their 30's. The youngest of these guys was the one I first heard talking and I didn't think much about it. It was clear from his voice that he had some sort of disability, but I couldn't tell exactly what. I looked up when I heard him say something to the other guys and they all began to laugh at him, but he stood there with the most confused and painful look on his face and the next second the look was gone and he went back to talking and they other men continued to laugh at him. He didn't even understand that they were not his friends and they were simply making of him for what he was saying and for his disability. I was so angry, I wanted to turn around and go back and say something to the guys, but I didn't because being the small person I am, I didn't think that would be very smart. As I walked away all these thoughts flooded through my mind.
We get so caught up in our own lives that we don't even think about what is going on with someone else. We are just walking through our selfish lives looking upon a sea of faces. Of course, I am not the best person in the world to critique the way other people look at others. One of my favorite activities is people watching, but this was different. This was making fun of someone for something they have no control over, not because they have two different socks on or walked out of the bathroom with toilet paper on their shoe. This is much deeper than that. This is about being so caught up in ourselves that we look upon the faces of people with such deep hurt in their lives and yet we keep walking and wallowing in our own self pity because no one will pity us. Sometimes pity isn't what we want, sometimes all we want is for someone to say they care. Seeing that young guy in the hall that day and seeing the way those men were treating him really made me think about the sea of faces we pass through everyday and the way we never give a second thought to who they may be and what they are suffering through.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
