Taking Time to Look

For most of this blog’s relatively short lived life, I have signed off each post with the word, “Namaste.” There are several slightly differing definitions of this term that derives from the Sanskrit word, “Namaskaram,” including: I bow to the divinity inherent in you; I respect divinity in you that is also within me; and, my favorite: The light within me honors the light within you.

You see, everyone – from your closest friend to your worst enemy to that sibling that knows precisely how best to push your buttons and get under your skin – has a light within, a loving place, a place with which we can empathize – if we take time enough to look. It is so easy in our fast-paced, highly caffeinated, plugged in world to make snap judgments about people and their intentions. It’s so easy to assume what “sort” of person someone is by how they carry themselves at the office or how they order their half-caf triple mocha. We all too often instantly categorize folks into a folder or box of some sort, telling ourselves: “He’s aloof” or “She’s a whiner” or “She’s the quintessence of hipness” or “He’s just a jerk.” How often does it then happen that we encounter that person about whom we made a snap judgment in a different environment? Or, there arises an opportunity to see them in a new light, and – aha! – we were wrong! What seemed to be aloofness was, perhaps, concentration and passion for getting the job done right the first time. I know I’ve experienced these reversals of perceptions, and if you are honest with yourself, you’ve probably been there too.

Yesterday afternoon I was walking home from my local Starbucks and I was smoking a cigarette. (I know, I know, I should quit. Working on it. At least I’m only smoking out of doors these days.) At any rate, a man was walking toward me and he asked me for a cigarette. I said, as I always do when asked for a smoke from someone I don’t know, “I’m sorry, man, no.” As he passed me, he said, “No smoke for the black man, eh?”

I was stunned.

I turned around and said, “Listen man, it has nothing to do with your race, these things are expensive, you know? I wouldn’t give you a cigarette is you were white or Hispanic or whatever!”

“You’re just a racist, white boy, just like everyone else is, and you may as well admit it,” he shouted back.

I wish I could tell you that I found a way to see the light within this man at that moment. I didn’t. I told him where he could go and walked away.

But there is a light in him just as there is a light in me. And on further reflection it occurred to me that this must be a man who has felt the bitter pain of racism on numerous occasions. That doesn’t make it right for him to accuse me of being a racist, but it does allow me one small way to empathize with him, to begin to see how the light within him has been systematically diminished over time through the brutality of racism. I say “diminished,” not “extinguished,” for I’m certain it remains within.

I wish I’d had the quickness of thought to say to him, “If I were to give you a cigarette, would that mean that you would no longer see me as a racist? What if I gave you a whole pack of cigarettes? Or twenty dollars? Would I then just be a racist who had a small streak of kindness?”

If I ever see him again, I will try to ask these questions. I will try to allow him to see the light within me just as I will be taking the time to look, and to look hard, for the light within him.

Namaste.