Our Understanding is Lacking

Our Understanding is Lacking 

As I look out into the dreary streets of this city beneath the over hang of an abandoned market; while watching strangers pass by. I think to myself how strange it is, how amazing, how humbling it is.

To realize that each person passing by, young or old. Each has a story, each has a perspective, each has suffering, struggles, and joy. Each living in the known and the unknown. These city streets, though I dread their congested momentum and their consent need to be connected in everything.

I have a sympathy for it all, for us, I have no pity, but I have great sympathy. For we all have our paths, our heartaches, our lessons, our failures. Some of us start off worse than others, some are born in poverty and know the dreadful aching of hunger. Of worrying if food will be available today.

While others, may be born of great wealth, knowing not the pains of hunger or shelter. But knowing  the lack of love, of affection from themselves and others. The lack of growth from suffering. Then, you have those that post up in the middle like a weed in the grass. They are among  most of us, the average born, living in the average life where nothing is too stressful, when it comes to the physical needs of health.

But in all this, I still see the endless boundaries we have yet to cross with each other. So focused on ourselves we forget the daily agony we posses may also be another's. Those that stand next to us in line, may have just received news that they have cancer or their father has died.

Maybe the customer that is addressing you with nothing but anger upon their breath. Is going through a divorce or maybe abused excessively and knows not of how to address such a thing. Or where to put the suffering that has been internal in them their entire life.

The streets bear stories and more than not they collide and they collide with fury. Rarely do they collide with compassion and thought. Now, I am not saying in my thoughts that we should never think rudely of others, for we do many things that are rude and unacceptable.

But I or others in the worst of luck, gives neither of us the right to act poorly toward another. But it can give us the understanding of each other. But I fear that when we do, as rare as it is, we spill our hearts with empathy or anger.

We either give too much, listen too little, and teach even less. Or, we flounder in our frustration and spite others in our passing. So in my thought as the street lights bring reflection upon the falling rain, I think, what grace it would bring, that instead of rushing to our emotions in the heat of our problems, small or big, that we would stop?

That we would take, even a moment to Listen to our hearts and remember that those in front of us, beside us, and behind us where ever we may be. Each have their unwavering challenges. Yes, some may be unwelcoming people and never grow beyond their misery.

But in the acceptance of ours and the perceiving of others. Maybe this dreadful city I resent with every cell in my body, can one day become a place of understanding and growth. A place where we have sympathy over torrential tears of empathy for strangers. Or the ceaseless need to spit brashness from our throats.

So that we may be more kind, more giving in listening and teaching. Rather than gouging our hearts out with anger or giving into the suffering of others and only leading them deeper into their despair.
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Do you think we react to quickly and listen too poorly?

More provoking and thought embracing words in, A Man's Traveled Heart
Coming soon, The Bleeding of Words.

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