the beginnings of compassion..

I spent the day chas­ing around Cal­gary, mak­ing busy in the blow­ing snow (yes, snow at the end of April). After two day long appoint­ments came and went, and I returned home from a third, impromptu pho­tog­ra­phy work­shop I real­ized that I’d an evening com­mit­ment for a birth­day cel­e­bra­tion.  Mind still buzzing from the day, I hopped into the car and headed downtown.

By the time I reached my des­ti­na­tion, giant slushy flakes of snow were blow­ing side­ways down the alley­way and I hud­dled deep in to my jacket try­ing to iso­late myself from the bit­ing wind as much as pos­si­ble.. As I rounded the final cor­ner, I noticed a man hud­dled in a dry cor­ner under an over­hang and made the delib­er­ate choice to walk past him with enough dis­tance between us to deter any con­ver­sa­tion about spare change.  I noted my choice and promptly set it to the back of my mind as my pri­or­ity shifted to get­ting out of the sloppy wet­ness rain­ing from the sky.

After three hours of won­der­ful con­ver­sa­tion a few drinks, a shared plate of pou­tine, and a piece of choco­late cake that I didn’t need but really wanted, we all parted ways and I returned to my car past the same hud­dled man who by this time was lay­ing down curled up to stave off the near freez­ing temperatures.

For the first time in years I found myself not just walk­ing by but actu­ally putting myself in to his sit­u­a­tion. Not out of guilt or any oblig­a­tion but because it felt like the right thing to do..  I felt com­pletely pan­icked by the prospect of spend­ing the night out there uncov­ered and unpro­tected and as I walked back to the car I pon­dered my options and finally set­tled on dig­ging out a fleece blan­ket that I’d been using to cover my equip­ment when it sits in the back of the car..

I felt a range of emo­tions sweep through me and was sur­prised by how many related to my attach­ment to a blan­ket.  It was expen­sive, it was mostly serv­ing a pur­pose, what was I going to replace it with? Then I con­tem­plated whether one of the two emer­gency sleep­ing bags in the back would have been a bet­ter option.  They were about the same price, but might have been bet­ter options. But then I need them for an upcom­ing camp­ing trip. But do I need both?

As I arrived home I wan­dered through the empty house and con­tem­plated why I wouldn’t have just offered this guy a place to sleep that was warm and dry.  I have plenty of  space, and extra bed and plenty of hot water.   The obvi­ous answer is rooted in safety, my own per­sonal, and the secu­rity of my stuff,  elec­tron­ics, cam­eras, per­sonal effects etc..  I’ve pon­dered this evening, the lim­i­ta­tions of stuff and whether my deci­sion would have been dif­fer­ent had I noth­ing worth steal­ing kept in the house.  That led me to won­der­ing why I would imme­di­ately con­sider some­one home­less a threat.

My only con­clu­sion at this point is that this whole sce­nario is messed up. I need to reeval­u­ate my own val­ues and con­sider what is really most impor­tant. I’m near cer­tain right now that the ‘stuff’ will not win out in the reconciliation.