People usually define their lives by what they’ve done and accomplished. For some reason, I define by life by what I haven’t done.
I’ll never forget standing in the confession line in a catholic church one afternoon, and a man and a boy lined up behind me. I pondered how they knew each other as the young man rubbed the boy’s shoulders supportively. Then in a flash, like a dream, his hands moved down from the boys shoulders to his stomach, still rubbing. I stood frozen and perplexed. Was that normal? I looked at the boy as if to ask him. The boy smiled at me- did that smile seem painful and forced, and were his eyes screaming for help? I looked away and turned my thoughts to my own affairs. Later, as I kneeled in the church pew whispering my penance, the same boy kneeled a ways down from me, the man still by his side, still rubbing his shoulders incessantly. “Jeez, stop touching him!!” I thought to myself, and I felt suspicious towards the man. The whole situation just didn’t feel right. But I didn’t know what to do, and so I shrugged my shoulders and carried on.
Another time, I was having a small battle in the chiropractor’s office with the doctor who had seen me. I was trying to get copies of my x-rays, and he was creating a divergence. I had found a chiropractor who charged less and needed the x-rays, and that was an issue for him. Finally, he relented and brusquely told the receptionist, who was his wife, to get the copies for me. As he traipsed away, I briefly made eye contact with the receptionist, and she looked as if she was about to cry. It occurred to me to ask her if she was okay, but I didn’t.
Thinking back, I feel like I should have. It wouldn’t have done any harm, and it could have done a world of Good. I don’t know what either of their situations were. I didn’t want to pry. But would it be prying just to ask that? I don’t believe so. But at the time, I lacked the courage to say it. I’m painfully shy and afraid of social interaction. Even with my own family I can sometimes feel like a stranger.
A different time, again in church in the line for confession, the woman next to me was silently yet openly weeping. The tears poured from her eyes and the pain gushing from her was palpable. This time I didn’t hesitate. I asked: “Are you okay?” She turned to me and smiled through her tears. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you. You are an angel.” I didn’t think what I had done was very angelic. But that warm, fuzzy feeling of doing Good churned in me like butter as I smiled back and said: “Of course, confession is tough!”
And yet most of the time, doing Good and helping people doesn’t come naturally to me. When someone needs help, a reflex kicks in and I become frozen, trapped inside myself. Deep from within, I scream: “How can I help that person?! I’m the one who needs help!” Or that mire of spiritual inertia stops me from acting. “I’m much too tired… and there’s far too much on my plate.” I tell myself.
But doing Good is something I’d like to get better at. It’s something I pray for everyday, and it’s one of the few prayers I feel confident God will answer. I guess why I define my life by these moments when I disappointed myself, when I feel I should have acted and didn’t, is because those moments taught me what I desire the most- what I’m craving and really needing. Nowadays when I reflect on them, I close my eyes and promise I won’t ever remain silent again. “Just say those words, Marie… just say them. ‘Are you okay?’ It’s not elaborate. It’s not a hard thing to say.”
There is one moment in my life when I feel like I was able to do Good. It was during one of my many stays at an in-patient psychiatric facility. The patients had been called into the dining hall for dinner, and there was a quiet pause as everyone dug into their meals. Looking back, it was like the calm before a storm. Even though I had been starving just a few minutes ago and my meal looked appetizing, my stomach started clenching and I lost my appetite, so I sat there sipping on a glass of water. All of a sudden one of the patients, a large, lumbering, silent, scowling man diagnosed with schizophrenia, had another patient by the throat; it was a boy who had been sitting across the table from me. I jumped up along with everyone else in the room. We were frozen stiff as we watched the two men scuffle and listened helplessly to the screaming. But for once, I didn’t remain frozen. Although everything happened in an instant, I was able to recall how I had been strangled, hailed with rocks, and mercilessly bullied in school as a child. “That was wrong. This is wrong. I need to do something.” I thought. “But what?” The image flashed through my mind of me hopping across the table and intervening. Fear caused me to reconsider. “I need a weapon.” was my next thought. I picked up my chair and tried to aim it at the attacker. That was hard because he was standing behind the boy holding his throat. I threw the chair and was only able to slightly graze the man… but it did something! I could see how he paused the vicious throttling and how fear flickered through his eyes as he realized he wasn’t the only one attacking. Just then, the staff of the facility barreled in and pinned him. It was all over in a matter of seconds, but I had made a difference. For once, my past hadn’t held me back; it had motivated me to act.
Shit happens. But just like fertilizer, good things can grow from the shit; Good can come from Evil. That’s what I want my life to be about: stopping Evil in it’s tracks, or at least pulling the Good from it.