People are endlessly fascinating. If I ever were to write the story of my life, much of it would consist (as does GKC's autobiography) of random anecdotes and descriptions of people I've encountered or spoken to along the way. I value the tiniest amount of genuine personal experience and insight over a thousand terrabytes of scientific data: and a large part of what I've learned about the world I've learned merely from engaging with people.
Today, an experience reminded me of an encounter that made a profound impact on me at the time, and has shaped my thinking in a lot of areas since. It was probably three or four years ago now, during my undergraduate years at a fairly small Evangelical school in the South. It was summer, a blazing, humid, grubby little summer day of the sort that only Alabama at its worst seems to produce. I was on my way home, walking across campus to meet my father, when I saw something I've never been able to forget: a very elderly African-American man, dressed in the uniform of a UPS delivery man, pushing a heavy package on a handcart. What made me stop and turn around, though, was the fact that this old man could barely walk: he was completely disabled, unable to stand on his own, and as I walked easily by, he was using the handcart as a walker, inching his way painfully a footstep at a time, barely moving at all, and sweating profusely in the miserable heat.
The campus was not crowded at this time, but there were people occasionally walking by--young, healthy men and women who could have moved the cart ten times faster than he. Almost all ignored him. I remember vividly a young woman walking by and giving him a kindly, indulgent smile. I am not quite sure what she was smiling about.
Anyway, after a moment or two of thought, I retraced my steps, and offered to help the old man take his package the hundred or so feet to the building he was going to--a journey that would have taken me probably less than a minute. To my surprise, he absolutely refused my offer. It was, he told me, sweating and shaking from the heat and the exertion of his task, against UPS's rules to allow anyone but him to deliver the package, for safety and liability reasons: and if I were to be injured somehow in delivering it, he would get into severe trouble. The odds of me being injured pushing a handcart a hundred feet across pavement were, of course, infinitesimally low; but when I tried to say this, he grew even more strident in his refusals. I, he insisted, had a future. I was here at this university to get an education and make it in the world. If I were to be injured helping "some old black man," he was sure, my parents would be absolutely furious. They wouldn't understand my behavior at all! They paid good money to send me to school so I could get an education and make something of myself. They didn't want me helping "some old black man."
There was very little I could do at that point; but I stayed nearby him, at least, as the scenario grew (to my eyes) ever stranger and more surreal. There I was, a young, healthy man, standing silently while a disabled old man pushing a handcart sweated and shook and insisted, in the very strongest of terms, that no one would either want or allow me to help him. The old man's already snails' pace slowed even further as he continued to talk to me, losing all awareness of time or space, repeating the same phrases over and over again, embellishing them with dismal claims about the nature of society and anecdotes from his life and those of people he knew. I'm afraid I no longer remember most of them. I don't know if he got some kind of enjoyment or catharsis from shouting at me; I hope he did. In any event, I had no intention of leaving him.
So there we went, for about half an hour in the end, covering less ground than I could have in fifteen seconds. The more I listened, the sadder and the more angry I became; not at him, but at the horror of what I was witnessing: an old, disabled man, in a supposedly just and prosperous society, at a Christian university no less, killing himself for the smallest bit of livelihood.
Eventually, he (somehow) reached his destination, and delivered his package. By that time, I had belatedly offered to get him some bottled water at least; and this he had accepted. The administrator whose package it was received him with another kindly, indulgent smile (again a reaction I found puzzling, to say the least) and offered him a temporary rest in the air-conditioned interior. I brought him some bottled water, and at this point, he did thank me, wearily but sincerely. Then he said farewell, and we parted; and I have never seen him since. Possibly he is out there still, struggling to deliver packages.
This experience had a profound impact on me, to say the least; though for the moment I told no one of what had happened. I have rarely talked of it since. Relationships are too important and too mysterious to be publicized wantonly, or turned into anecdotes whose only point is their impact on the one who experiences them; and this old man and I had formed a relationship, no matter how strange, during the half-an-hour in which we sweated outside in the Alabama heat.
Laid out like this, you could make this anecdote about any number of different things. Race, certainly; class, most definitely; a lack of respect for the elderly and the disabled, naturally; not to mention, of course, an economic system and a society that systematically prizes money and convenience over human persons and their needs. But to take a person and his sufferings and make him *about* an issue is to miss the whole point. Really, it's the other way around.
An old man, a person, has suffered for most of his life grave injustice in the midst of great prosperity; and his suffering has been ignored and overlooked by those who could have helped him. That is the point; that is the reality. I don't know--I don't need to know, necessarily--who exactly or what precisely caused that to be: though I believe the most fully fitting term would be "sin." But whatever caused this to happen, whether it be human malice or indifference or culture or racism or economic systems or even the iron laws of fate itself--whatever caused this should be destroyed. That much I am sure of, and always will be.
Today, an experience reminded me of an encounter that made a profound impact on me at the time, and has shaped my thinking in a lot of areas since. It was probably three or four years ago now, during my undergraduate years at a fairly small Evangelical school in the South. It was summer, a blazing, humid, grubby little summer day of the sort that only Alabama at its worst seems to produce. I was on my way home, walking across campus to meet my father, when I saw something I've never been able to forget: a very elderly African-American man, dressed in the uniform of a UPS delivery man, pushing a heavy package on a handcart. What made me stop and turn around, though, was the fact that this old man could barely walk: he was completely disabled, unable to stand on his own, and as I walked easily by, he was using the handcart as a walker, inching his way painfully a footstep at a time, barely moving at all, and sweating profusely in the miserable heat.
The campus was not crowded at this time, but there were people occasionally walking by--young, healthy men and women who could have moved the cart ten times faster than he. Almost all ignored him. I remember vividly a young woman walking by and giving him a kindly, indulgent smile. I am not quite sure what she was smiling about.
Anyway, after a moment or two of thought, I retraced my steps, and offered to help the old man take his package the hundred or so feet to the building he was going to--a journey that would have taken me probably less than a minute. To my surprise, he absolutely refused my offer. It was, he told me, sweating and shaking from the heat and the exertion of his task, against UPS's rules to allow anyone but him to deliver the package, for safety and liability reasons: and if I were to be injured somehow in delivering it, he would get into severe trouble. The odds of me being injured pushing a handcart a hundred feet across pavement were, of course, infinitesimally low; but when I tried to say this, he grew even more strident in his refusals. I, he insisted, had a future. I was here at this university to get an education and make it in the world. If I were to be injured helping "some old black man," he was sure, my parents would be absolutely furious. They wouldn't understand my behavior at all! They paid good money to send me to school so I could get an education and make something of myself. They didn't want me helping "some old black man."
There was very little I could do at that point; but I stayed nearby him, at least, as the scenario grew (to my eyes) ever stranger and more surreal. There I was, a young, healthy man, standing silently while a disabled old man pushing a handcart sweated and shook and insisted, in the very strongest of terms, that no one would either want or allow me to help him. The old man's already snails' pace slowed even further as he continued to talk to me, losing all awareness of time or space, repeating the same phrases over and over again, embellishing them with dismal claims about the nature of society and anecdotes from his life and those of people he knew. I'm afraid I no longer remember most of them. I don't know if he got some kind of enjoyment or catharsis from shouting at me; I hope he did. In any event, I had no intention of leaving him.
So there we went, for about half an hour in the end, covering less ground than I could have in fifteen seconds. The more I listened, the sadder and the more angry I became; not at him, but at the horror of what I was witnessing: an old, disabled man, in a supposedly just and prosperous society, at a Christian university no less, killing himself for the smallest bit of livelihood.
Eventually, he (somehow) reached his destination, and delivered his package. By that time, I had belatedly offered to get him some bottled water at least; and this he had accepted. The administrator whose package it was received him with another kindly, indulgent smile (again a reaction I found puzzling, to say the least) and offered him a temporary rest in the air-conditioned interior. I brought him some bottled water, and at this point, he did thank me, wearily but sincerely. Then he said farewell, and we parted; and I have never seen him since. Possibly he is out there still, struggling to deliver packages.
This experience had a profound impact on me, to say the least; though for the moment I told no one of what had happened. I have rarely talked of it since. Relationships are too important and too mysterious to be publicized wantonly, or turned into anecdotes whose only point is their impact on the one who experiences them; and this old man and I had formed a relationship, no matter how strange, during the half-an-hour in which we sweated outside in the Alabama heat.
Laid out like this, you could make this anecdote about any number of different things. Race, certainly; class, most definitely; a lack of respect for the elderly and the disabled, naturally; not to mention, of course, an economic system and a society that systematically prizes money and convenience over human persons and their needs. But to take a person and his sufferings and make him *about* an issue is to miss the whole point. Really, it's the other way around.
An old man, a person, has suffered for most of his life grave injustice in the midst of great prosperity; and his suffering has been ignored and overlooked by those who could have helped him. That is the point; that is the reality. I don't know--I don't need to know, necessarily--who exactly or what precisely caused that to be: though I believe the most fully fitting term would be "sin." But whatever caused this to happen, whether it be human malice or indifference or culture or racism or economic systems or even the iron laws of fate itself--whatever caused this should be destroyed. That much I am sure of, and always will be.
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