I met a human man today. His pants were covered in shit. His mother died today. He stood in a parking lot, in a hedge along the wall, waiting for his girl. She had run off with another man. He waited distraught, hoping she might come back. All his belongings were in a suitcase. The suitcase had been stolen. He had only the clothes on his back. These clothes were covered in shit, he had soiled himself. He knew no-one in California, he had never been here before. He had come here, with his girl, to go into rehab, but she had got both of them kicked out. Then she left him because another man gave her some money. He was sobbing to me, but not really to me, telling me his story, a stranger in the parking lot, another grown man witnessing his experience.
His sobs and his pain were so unfiltered, he had nothing left to cover himself up with.
He asked for help. Some cleaner clothes. A pair of boxer shorts. Some way to charge his phone. All of these I could provide easily, simply needing a short trip home and back to get him some of the clothes I have plenty of, and a USB charger, which are just lying around, unused. Thinking of how much we have lying around unused brings tears to my eyes. How much we consume, not for the joy of its use but for the consumption itself.
In picking out the clothes I notice all the layers of consumption we build on top of the abundance we have. In doing so we create lack and scarcity for ourselves, so we can fill that with consumption. I found myself noticing with a new eye the brands, the logos on the shirts, the things we mostly pay attention to. In this moment I found myself asking instead what function the shirt provides, whether he needs a warm shirt or a light one rather than what color it was, or what logo design it had on it.
In looking at the closet we say “I have nothing to wear”, ignoring the 30 shirts that are there. How consumed by lack we are! We love to create artificial scarcity – we must have the expensive thing, the pretty thing, the fashion for this year, or the rebellious anti-fashion thing.
The pure simple feeling of awakened heart energy I felt, in the very ordinary thing of bringing some clothes to a man who needed clothes because his were soiled – this is what there really is at the core of our experience here. Not because it showed me how better off I am than him, although that ego judgement is also there. But more powerful is the simple loving-kindness energy of giving something to someone that needs something, witnessing another human going through their experience, as I am going through mine.
Loving Kindness Wins.