She was sitting on a backpack at the end of the exit ramp. Although I barely had time to look at her, I saw enough as I passed in my car to notice that a) she appeared clean, b) she held a cardboard sign on which the word “traveling” was printed, and c) she resembled a young woman I know.
The last part of that observational triad jumped at me. It made me want to stop in the middle of the road (after I had made the turn) and find a way to go back to her, to give her some money or encouragement.
That’s when I realized my bias. Because the young woman reminded me of someone I know, because she didn’t display any obvious signs of extreme poverty or substance abuse, I was more inclined to feel some connection with her, I was more open to feeling empathetic.
She was somebody’s child. That was somebody’s daughter asking for travel money at the end of an interstate exit ramp.
It’s not easy to see others through the sympathetic and caring lens of a parent. It’s especially difficult to recognize common humanity with someone who is or seems drunk, someone who is or seems high, someone who is or seems mentally unhealthy. And yet we see them every day, there, by the side of the road, or here, leaned against the walls of downtown buildings. They hold signs, often with lettering that is difficult to read even if we made an effort to do so. They aren’t typically well-groomed. They aren’t usually well-mannered. We know nothing about them; we don’t really want to know more about them. Their presence disturbs us. We feel powerless to know how we can help, if at all. We often convince ourselves not to help, not usually at least, as if that single gesture, even done just once, could cause us to wonder why we don’t repeat it or, even worse, cause us to someone touch accidentally or otherwise talk and connect with a person whose life may represent a giant heap of trouble, poor decisions, terrible luck, and general human mess.
We aren’t wrong to hesitate. We aren’t wrong not to help everyone with an outstretched hand. We aren’t wrong to pass some of these people without any action. It’s not clear who each person is and what it is they need. It’s not practical that every person we encounter is someone that each of us should help. It’s sometimes simply not safe to try to give that help when people are asking for it in high traffic locations such as exit ramps and busy interactions.
There is something we can do, however, something that doesn’t require pulling off the road or rifling through our pockets at a traffic light. It needs no money. It doesn’t require physical contact or interpersonal risk.
We can remember that all of these people – and all of us, together – are somebody’s child.
Parents aren’t perfect. Many children never know one or the other of their parents. And too many children suffer abuse at the hands of one or more of their parents. But there is something special about the relationship between a parent and child, something unique. While some of the people we see, people whose lives are stuffed into backpacks and shopping carts, while some were maltreated as children, many were not. Most likely have family who wonder about them, every day, who worry if they are safe, who hope that the world will show a bit of kindness to people – their children – lost in the sometimes hope-depleted maze of modern existence.
For each of these struggling souls, whether fretted about from afar or adrift alone in the sea of life’s struggle, I can try something new, something that takes little time and may or may not be associated with a five dollar bill or any visible gesture of recognition. I can imagine, briefly, what that person with a cardboard sign may have been like, months or years ago, before things took a turn for the worse. I can remind myself that this moment was not one they envisioned would happen when they were young, when they were innocent, and when they dared to dream.
All of us, once, were children. In some ways, all of us still are.