Resposibilities of the Heart

In our relationships with others… Think about that phrase for a moment. Do you realize that this applies to every time we meet, however briefly, anybody? Yourself, your lover/partner, your children. Your neighbor, the manager of your apartment building, the cashier at the store, the person you walk by on the street. Each encounter is a relationship and how you are, affects each one.

Every time we see someone, they are, to some degree or another, trusting us not to hurt them. We all do it one way or another, or we wouldn’t leave our homes. However, we often don’t think about how our own actions might impact another. This is us putting ourselves first and then we wonder why people respond in kind.

When I walk down the street, I notice that most people walk by each other like they’re the only ones there: They don’t see one another, instead it’s like they look through everyone. If you try to get someone’s attention, you have to be loud, be directly in front of them and make sure you do something somewhat out of the ordinary so they tune back into the world around them and see you.

We cultivate this isolation behavior in ourselves. It’s like an extreme version of elevator PC: Say nothing, look at nothing, don’t be seen, don’t see. But we no longer walk out of that elevator to behave like a human being. Now it’s like we walk around in the thing. We cannot see people anymore – just the boxes that contain them.