2016 was a very challenging year. For a lot of complex reasons, that I still don’t have a very good handle on. But right now I want to talk about something very concrete.
In a couple hours, you will go home, and you’ll walk past a person. Lying on the sidewalk, wrapped in whatever blankets they can find. Alone. They won’t ask you for money, because they’re past that point. They’re just trying to make it through the night.
You might not see them, because human brains train themselves to ignore things that seem unimportant, or uncomfortable, or beyond the scope of things you can do something about.
If you do see them… maybe you’ll stop and try to help somehow. Maybe you’ll just meet their eyes as warmly as you can. Maybe you just keep walking.
Whichever choice you make, by the time you get home, you’ll have walked past at least one more person in the exact same situation.
And the thought might occur to you - that it’s 2016. And we haven’t even beaten winter in it’s most basic, elemental form. It might seem like there’s a bottomless pit of unfairness, filled with desperate people and broken systems and that no matter how long you work, how hard you try, that pit will always be there.
And you might even be right. Because there is no long moral arc of the universe bending towards justice. There are just people. Doing the best they can. And sometimes their best isn’t good enough.
This is the secular solstice, and we don’t deal in comforting lies. But we do have story to share.
The story isn’t quite as clean or convenient as I’d like.
But it’s true.
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