Meditations on Meaning

Just a hundred yards or so from my house, on my way home from the coffee shop this morning, I felt a tug on my jeans… and heard a voice from the direction of the tug. “Hey… dreamy guy!” I jumped back and looked down.

He was a little man… long hair, no shoes, dirty clothes, cardboard sign. “You pass by here every morning,” he said. “And you never read my sign.”

I didn’t remember seeing him or his sign before. But I indulged him and read: “Why lie! I need another beer.”

“It’s a joke,” he said. “I’ve been sober for seventeen years.”

“So why go there?” I asked. “People don’t like funding addictions.”

“Because it gets me noticed,” he said. “Well… by enough people.”

“But being noticed like that won’t get you food,” I said.

“Maybe,” he said. “But a smile is all I need to win someone over… ‘Cause, you know, I have a friendly style and charming good looks.”

There was nothing charming about his looks… in fact, he looked sick. “So what’s your deal?” I asked.

He told me.

I didn’t know if his story was true… but it didn’t matter. He was there, in front of me, and I felt bad for him.

We walked together to a grocery store, and I bought him five sandwiches. When I returned home, I called a friend who knows more about public health care than I do, and asked about options… She’s following up on those now.

In the meantime, here’s the deal: I’m not a saint! I swear often, daydream always, work too much, rarely give to charity, don’t spend enough time with my girlfriend or family, etc. Yet, despite having spent years pretending that homeless people don’t exist, I had just engaged in a series of actions that may help to get one man’s life back on track.

If we can identity the steps that made me – of all people – take real action… and if those steps are repeatable… then perhaps we’ll have figured out how each of us can be a little more effective in making the world a better place.

So let’s get to work!

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Step One: Tune In
Our lives are filled with so much noise that the only way for us to focus… to live… to get things done… is to become experts at tuning out irrelevant crap.

We tune out over three thousand ads a day coming at us from different sources… we tune out the multiple conversations that are happening around us in a restaurant… we tune out the news that tells us there are thousands dying of starvation each day in Darfur… and we even tune out the homeless people that we pass everyday on the street.

We do it because, simply, if we spent all of our time thinking about everything that is bad or wrong in this world… we’d never be able to focus on the things that matter the most to us… like our lives, our families, and our communities.

But we’ve gotten so good at tuning out people and problems that aren’t in our “inner circle” that oftentimes, as is certainly the case with me, we spend almost no time caring about what’s going on outside of those circles.

Jerry played an active – even audacious – role in making sure I tuned in. First, he advertised his predicament with a sign that he knew would draw attention. Then, when that didn’t work, he tugged on my pants and called me a silly name. And whether I asked for it or not… I was faced with his pain.

And when faced with another person’s pain… when we don’t have the option to tune it out… when we see it, feel it, and hear it… the vast majority of us won’t turn our backs on it. We’re simply not wired that way!

Step 2: Be Human
When Jerry grabbed my leg and called me “dreamy guy”, I had no intentions of helping him. It wasn’t just that he’d invaded my personal space and called me a childish name… it was also that he was homeless!

I’ve never had much empathy for homeless people. “There’s a reason they’re homeless,” my mother used to say… and her point was that it was likely a good reason.

But Jerry had my attention, and he wasn’t about to let it go. So he asked me to look at his cardboard sign… he talked about the sign’s irony…he told me a compelling life story. Anything to keep me tuned in long enough to be human… to see him as human.

When he finished the story, he was no longer a potential attacker or poster boy for American’s failures… Rather, he was a sick man who needed help… a sick man to whom I could give help!

Tuning in wasn’t enough for me… I wanted to change the channel. But the longer Jerry kept the channel focused on his pain, the more I saw his humanity… and the more I felt my own.

Sometimes being human is easy. If we see a little girl get hit by a car, for instance, we’ll rush to her aid. But sometimes – particularly when it’s hard to tune in, like with the plight of starving Darfur refugees, being human isn’t so easy.

In these cases, it’s important to remember that the people who are hardest to see or connect with are oftentimes also the ones who are most in need of help. If we can remember that, then we can choose to be human even when we can’t tune in!

Step 3: Do Something
There are many people who felt totally horrified while watching “An Inconvenient Truth”… and then went back to their gas-guzzling cars and electricity-sucking lifestyles. I know because, well, I’m one of them!

If we’re serious about making the world a better place… we must figure out how to change these patterns. If we’re tuned in… and if we’re human… then we’re much more likely to do something. But it’s no guarantee. It’s still up to us to actually do it.

Doing something for Jerry was easy. He was hungry and needed medication… so I took him to a grocery store, and found someone who can help find him the right medical care. Taking action with global warming is easy too… we can reduce our energy emissions and not use polluting aerosol cans.

But oftentimes, even when we’re tuned in, human, ready to do something… getting things done isn’t so simple… or even practical. For instance, my business partner Wilford would like to see cigarette butts cleaned from the streets. But he realizes that if he were to spend a day doing it… he wouldn’t be nearly as effective as he’d prefer to be.

In cases like Wilford’s, there are three things we can do:
a) Do it anyway! Sure, we won’t get all of the cigarette butts… but we’ll do our part, and the world would be a little cleaner thanks to him.
b) Find something better to do! It turns out that Wilford is a genius programmer and is also excited about creating a technology that enables millions of people to do things that weren’t before possible. So, right now, he’s focusing on making that happen.
c) Invent something that lets others do what you want to do more efficiently! If Wilford wasn’t coding right now, he might try to invent something that sucks all the cigarette butts (and only cigarette butts) from the city streets…“It’s theoretically possible,” he tells me.

Conclusion
If a child screams for help, we come to her aid. If a family member is down on his luck, we pick him back up again. If a homeless person gets our attention, we give him food or money. There are physiological reasons for this!

When we are tuned into another human’s pain, it activates the same receptors in our brains as the person feeling the pain. We are truly feeling their pain! And when we do, we want to help that person… just as we’d want to help ourselves!

We all have an instinct to ease others’ pain and to improve the world. But to make that instinct present, certain things must happen:

1. We Must Tune In!
2. We Must Be Human!
3. We Must Do Something!

If we can follow these steps, then there’s no limit to the crazy shit we can do to improve the world!