Choices

So I'm at the supermarket, wandering aisles and picking out both things we need and things we think we need (and things we might think we might need); actually I'm the sounding board for my better half, who is usually the decision-maker in such things. We have a pretty good haul, and there is always that satisfying moment when the payment pad says, "Approved." We're okay.

All the while, when I'm not sharing my opinion on food choices, I'm kind of watching the world flow around me, and thinking of how each of us is really a point of life in the universe, and how there is something underlying the illusion of separateness. Kind of a Taoist, Zen, thing. It feels good. I feel good, and feel like I can be good.

We step outside, walking to our 2018 car to pack it all away. A woman comes up to me, maybe late middle-age, I can't really tell. She's got a sort of blotchy face, and is kind of heavy-set, though with disproportionately thinner legs. Wearing a stocking cap and faded, mismatched clothes, and a lost look in her eyes. She sort of shambles up to me, looking deferential, and says, "Can I ask you something?"

I react instinctively, because this sort of thing has happened before, and I don't want to get into any sort of dialogue, which will end up with her asking for money. So I say "no" rather sharply, and she turns away. Last I saw she was walking across the lot toward someone else. I'm hoping someone with authority will take her where she can get some help, though my cynical inner self says it's a pointless downhill cycle for her.

And then I realize I was at a point of choice, and I chose safe and selfish. I know I saw a look of humanity in her eyes, and I had a sort of "There-but-for-the-grace-of-God go I" moment. I also think about the Biblical comment about encountering angels unawares. But I'm not ready to go there. Not yet.

I chose to stay where I am, middle-class older man with pretensions of something better.

Maybe someday I can be better.

If I choose.