I haven't blogged for a while, mainly for two reasons. The first is that Google and Blogger and god knows who else merged and mixed and changed and for the longest time I just couldn't get into my blog to edit it! I also lost my list of subscribers (all 11 of you) and for a moment I lost interest. I joined Twitter, I'm on Facebook, everyone kinda knows what's going on most of the time anyway!
Last night I went to a meeting out near the airport. I took a bus to the subway station after the meeting and at one of the stops, a young woman got on with her dog. She was warmly dressed, her dog had a tee-shirt on, she was holding a book that she was in the middle of reading, a water bottle and a piece of cardboard. I watched her chatting to the bus driver and looked at the dog who was obviously very comfortable on the very noisy and bumpy bus. They both got off at the subway station and we went underground, everyone boarding the train downtown. Woman and her dog walked to a bench and sat down. She gave him/her some water and she opened up her book. I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed her and it didn't seem like it. Everyone was busy doing their thing, the young guy playing games on his iPad, the guy reading his Chinese newspaper, the old lady eating her cut up apple pieces from a plastic bag and me, staring at the Woman and her dog feeling incredibly sad. I wondered if she had anywhere to go, a place to sleep, food to eat? She didn't look malnourished at all and I asked myself if I offered her some money if I would be insulting her having made an assumption by her piece of cardboard that she was possibly homeless and hungry. Maybe she was, or maybe she is part of the Occupy group and is protesting by choice? Did I have any right to ask?
As the train doors closed and we began to move, I silently asked myself if my thoughts were wasted if I wasn't prepared to do anything about them. Maybe just the fact that I noticed was enough? I changed the song on my iPod and thought about the fact that I was on my way home to a warm house, a home-cooked meal and irrelevant TV that I would probably watch till 1am. What struck me was that I had not looked at her and felt grateful for what I had, I only felt sad for what I perceived she did not. I wonder if there is a difference?
It may be exceptionally judgmental of me to sit here and debate whether someone else is content or not. For me what is important is that I take the time to look around and see things, and sometimes they make me think. We rush around consumed by so much that is trivial, small things make us crazy and cause us not to see anything around us.
I'd like to think that at some point, someone has noticed me either walking down the street, or sitting on a train and that caused them to think something about themselves. I don't need them to come over and tell me anything. Maybe one day I'll read about it.
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