There was a man sleeping on the bench in the park the other morning. He was fully dressed in nice clothes, his shoes were clean (and white) and he looked a little embarrassed to be woken up as we walked by.
I said good morning to him, he replied the same. I said, ‘how are you’, he politely replied, ‘rough night’. I didn’t think anything of it. I figured he was out late drinking and slept on the bench instead of driving home.
A couple days later, I was walking through the same park, and saw the same guy, in the same clothes. This time, he again looked like he was just waking up. He got up to his feet and walked towards the street parking.
He pulled out a set of keys and opened the door to a newer white jeep cherokee. And slowly pulled away.
The last and most recent time I saw the same guy, in the same clothes, he had blankets spread out in the park. But this time he had a dog with him, and the same white jeep was parked on the street next to the park.
I tell this story because we have no idea what a regular person goes through each day. Maybe his partner kicked him out of the house, maybe for financial reasons he’s slowly losing all of his belongings.
Again, we don’t know. We don’t know what someone is going through that snaps at us at the grocery store, the person that won’t say ‘hello’ back…
We don’t know why people do the things they do, but if we could understand we all go through different things in our lives, maybe we could be more compassionate and understanding of each others circumstances.
