Haunting image that won’t go away

It’s been two weeks now since we were in Madrid.  It happened in an instant, but the image won’t go away.

We were walking on the sidewalk of a very busy and crowded city street. In the middle of the sidewalk a man lay on the ground on his side. One arm was raised and stretched out in my direction. The fingers were shaking. It looked like he was trying to catch my arm.  His eyes were dark brown and sunken, but he made eye contact with me. His head was lifted slightly from the pavement and his lips were trying to make a word.  He looked just like..... Jesus.

It was too crowded and too busy to stop, what with people bustling by in both directions and noisy traffic buzzing by just a foot away.  Everyone kept walking.

The whole incident lasted less than a second.  Yet, I’ve thought about it every day since.  Over and over as we walk mile after mile.

What happens when I arrive at Judgement Day and I am asked, “Where were you when I needed you?”

What can I say?  I didn’t see you, I didn’t know it was you, I couldn’t have done anything, I didn’t have time, I wasn’t a pilgrim yet so it didn’t count, I’m sure someone else would stop, I assumed Madrid has a social service system to help with situations like this.

If life comes down to a few moments did I fail my test? If I had the chance to do it all again would I do anything different? Will I get another chance? Do I deserve another chance?

Maybe this is what I supposed to learn on my Camino.  Most people start with it being an adventure, but deep down hope there will be more meaningful that happens.  Then you walk.  Hour after hour. Mile after mile. Day after day. You meet many people, see many things, and have many great experiences.  But most of the time it is done alone (even when traveling with your best friend). It is done in silence - just you and your thoughts and your conscious. The busyness of daily life is gone and your conscious has the opportunity to allow things to float toward the surface to actually be examined.

Time. How much time do I have? One of the reasons we wanted to do this now is that we did not want to run out of time.  We wanted to do it while our bodies were still able. But what is time?

On the one hand, all there is is the present moment you are living in that instant with your consciousness. The past and the future are illusions.  Since all there is is this present moment, then it is everything.  If something is everything then it is infinite. We all have infinite time, all the time, every day.

On the other hand time is relative. Einstein described relativity as, “a second feels like an hour when you put your hand on a hot stove; and an hour feels like a second when sitting next to a pretty girl”. Again we all have infinite time.

I had an infinite amount of time to help the man on the street.

Resources: How much do I need? Certainly not as much as I’ve got. Any I have the capacity to create more. So my resources are not infinite, but maybe they are not that far away.  They are certainly many thousands of times more than the man in the street needed.  Maybe all he was asking for was a sip of water and to hold his hand.

Suffering: How much suffering is there? Lots. I can’t imagine much more suffering a person could be in than that man on the street.  And that was one man, with one problem, on one street, in one city....

How much suffering is there? It’s infinate.

Why didnt I take some of my infinate time and my resources to help ease just a tiny bit of this man’s  suffering? I don’t know.

I want to say that I can’t help everyone. Maybe he deserved it. Maybe he was being punished and who was I to get in the way of justice. The first rule of economics is that you get more of what you spend money on...if you want more poverty then spend more on poverty, etc. that’s not how to fix it.

But I wasn’t talking everybody and I wasn’t talking about economics.  This was just one man and me. And I did nothing.

So each day we walk. Our bodies get sore and tired, sometimes cold and wet, sometimes hot and sunburned, sometimes blisters and pains. But that is nothing compared to how the conscious can torture the soul.