dread

I keep reading and hearing that there is a lot to be afraid of these days. As global challenges force a need for broader perspectives, compromise, diligent but patient thought and action, it seems our political, economic, and social landscapes are increasingly defined by just the opposite: polarization, uncompromising ideology, and principled egocentricity. Our challenges are enormous while our capacity to overcome them is impotent.

This fear is also more personal. As a child I ran fairly free, my more often than not included hopping on a bike and peddling out to wherever: up and down trails and back streets, across town to friends houses, to little shops to spend whatever change I could steal from between couch cushions on tootsie rolls and candy cigarettes. There was never the intense fear that I face today with my own child: what if someone steals him? Hits them with their car? What if he falls and no one stops to help him? What if he is scared and knocks on the wrong house?

The fear is equally felt on the other end of the spectrum. Today, Sunday, I took a short walk through town just as the churches were letting out. At a coffee shop just near the waterfront I came across an old man who was trying to stop people on the sidewalk. He was quiet and polite, but desperate, eyes were wide as he reached out to people, saying "Excuse me... excuse me..."  He reached out to me, and I stopped.

He asked if I could walk him across the street, walk to him to bus stop. He was mostly blind, old, alone, and terrified. As we waited for the bus, his arm wound around mine, still shaking, he began to tell me how he has been going to church here for 40 years, but only in the past three or four has he noticed that no one helps him anymore. Worse, he explained, people have started abusing him, kicking him or knocking him aside on the street. He is not sure if it is accidental or intentional, but he didn't seem to care which, he just knew that things were different and they filled him with dread. He kept grabbing my hand, "Are you still there? I am afraid. You will make sure the bus stops for me? It usually does not stop unless you wave it down, but I can not see it coming..."

It is hard for me to really determine whether things have actually changed. I have certainly changed. My parents likely felt the same fear I do now, and old, blind men likely felt just as abandoned and in fear. But I now see these things as I didn't before. I remember reading that at about age 26 males begin to associate consequences with actions, and as a result begin to see a world beyond their own immediate needs, and likely this is where my recognition of dread comes from: I am now capable of actually feeling it not just with regard to my own situation, but with regard to those other lost souls groping in the dark for someone to guide them.