One day, back in 2002 when I was living near Santa Cruz, California, I sat down on the pavement beside a man known as The Guru. He was a street bum I'd stopped to give a dollar to. He had a happy face with a mass of tangled white hair and beard that made him look like a Father Christmas, and I'd sat down because we'd chatted for a while and in the end it was easier to sit down on the pavement next to him than to keep knackering my knees by crouching.
It was odd, making that transition, from passerby crouching down to actually sitting on the street. It was the main downtown street, Pacific Avenue, and we were surrounded by many bright and flashy shops. He had chosen to sit on the road edge of the pavement, so we weren't even protected by having a building behind us, and there were many people walking passed and around us all the time. I had never felt so exposed, so vulnerable - to both the physicality of the position, but even more so to the judgement of those passing. It was amazingly uncomfortable.
However, we talked and I learned something of the man's story. He'd been a social worker (and I suspected that, in his own way, he still was) but had become lost to alcoholism. Then suddenly, as if from a sudden memory, he said it, the Why:
"My wife died."
His face changed as he said this. Whatever pain he'd gone through at that time - the pain that had led him to start drinking and lose the structure of his life, was clearly still there, untouched, unhealed. My mind was blank; I had nothing to say.
Maybe some would, and I've certainly tried to have words to say many times - before and since. But I suspect that when we do, when we have 'something to say', it's because we have forgotten that Life is not a spectator sport. When we watch from the safety of the outside, from some philosophy or some objective detachment, we succeed only in making a judgment - a viewpoint on another's life or situation.
I feel that if we truly get into Life, truly live it, then I think we have no words, and find that all we can do it sit with someone for a while, on their side of the road, and hope they feel a little bit less alone.
