Stories of Kindness from Around the World

It’s been a number of years now, but I still remember it - I suppose I always shall. 

I was driving around downtown one afternoon in the winter making a few deliveries.  I was listening to a band, rocking out, cruising around, and minding my own business…

I came up to a red light and stopped… waited.  As I looked over to my left, I saw a young guy, about my age at the time, standing there.  He was a little scruffy, pale in the face, and holding a cardboard sign with some writing on it.  Generally, I had always just glanced over these signs as I passed them, flicked over anything written on them, and then moved on…

As with most major cities, I’m sure when you’re in the heart of downtown, it’s pretty common to have homeless people on every other corner, holding a cardboard sign with something standard written on them - asking for money.  I suppose after so many years, one can easily get desensitized to this sort of thing.  In general, you see the person, read the sign if it’s short enough, and make a split second decision that you don’t want to go through the trouble of giving them money, or, you tell yourself you’ve given money before to a homeless person, or you tell yourself that they don’t look like they’re in dire need of money, or some other random split second decision or thought goes through your mind.  There are hundreds of thoughts and excuses out there… and we’ve all come up with them before.

So, as in this case, along with the rest of them before, I looked at this gentleman, skimmed over the sign, but this time, I stopped.  My mind went blank from all the hustle of the day, and work, and how I had to hurry, and where I had to go next, and what I was doing that night, and how much money I needed to come up with and so on…  The world stopped for a brief moment.  All I could hear was the song playing in the background - a melodic rock song, sung from the heart.  It was a powerful song that just added to the moment.  I can’t remember what the sign said exactly but it was something like:

“Need money/food, have stomach cancer, homeless, anything helps. God bless.”

I don’t know why, but for some reason this particular sign struck me.  The light had just turned green, and there was a line of lunch rush hour traffic behind me.  I went back and forth in my head a hundred times in that next second about whether I should do something.  “Should I help? I can’t! Should I ask him if I can buy him lunch? Talk to him? Smile? Drive on? This isn’t my problem. But, it’s bugging me, so I’d better do something.  I want to do something…” and so on...  "Should I do something?"

I didn’t.  I did nothing.

The light turned green, traffic moved forward, and I went with it.  About a block or two away, my heart had simply sunk for this guy.  I was just lost for words, and felt so bad for him.  I knew I probably couldn’t help him really, but I had to see if nothing else, maybe I could buy him lunch.  So, I turned around to go back and ask him if I could buy him lunch, talk to him and hear his story.

It took me about five minutes to get looped around and back on to the same street where I had seem him.  It was just five minutes - but he was gone.

My heart sunk.  I felt so bad that I didn’t act the moment I thought about it at that red light the first time.  “Where did he go so fast?” I wondered.  He was just gone.  I had missed him.  So, there was nothing left to do except drive on.  I started the song over that had just finished playing the whole time I saw and felt these things.  The chorus was what was playing when I pulled up the first time.  The chorus was playing when I drove off the second time.

It’s been a long time since I’d thought about this.  The song popped in my head the other day out of the blue.  It jarred a memory, a thought, a feeling.  I hope that man turned out okay.  I hope someone else stopped and invited him to lunch at least.  I hope someone stopped, and took a moment out of their busy day to talk with this man who may never have seen 30. 

I’m reminded of something I once read: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.”  I’ll never know.  You may never know.  But, I urge you this… If you get a special nudge from inside you, seriously consider acting on it.  Don’t miss out.  For yourself and for that other person.

~for those interested, the song referred to was 'Pillar of Davidson' by Live~