This I Believe: Life Lessons (7 page)

Opening the Door of Mercy

Karin Round

One afternoon a couple of summers ago, just as the sky was darkening, a woman I didn't know stood sagging on our threshold, holding the screen door open. I saw the silhouette of her head through the window.

No, she answered me, she was not all right. She didn't feel well at all. So, I wondered, what was I supposed to do now?

This moment of decision had happened to me before. For almost nineteen years, we've lived here at the foot of a highway exit ramp. Our address is blandly suburban, but the highway often leads exhausted cars onto our curb. Lately cell phones have diminished the flow, but we've met many people in distress. More diverse than our own community, these travelers have all asked for little things, such as the phone, a glass of water, or simply directions. All have been strangers to me.

Ours is a cynical, suspicious time. Conventional wisdom advises that to act as a good Samaritan is to be naive and risk terrible consequences. The news is full of stories about victims who unwittingly endanger themselves. I've no doubt that those are true stories, but the lesson rubs me the wrong way. Sometimes to do the right thing, you must take a risk. Must we fear all of those whom we don't know? If so, then how do we act or identify ourselves as neighbors or citizens when we won't greet one another without proper introductions and background checks? Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?

Our location forces me to make difficult choices. This is not some classroom debate for me. The highway makes it impossible to ignore the world and our relationship to it. When someone approaches us for help, I have to decide: Do I help them or not?

I wonder if people realize how final a step, how isolating, how evil it feels to literally shut the door on someone in need. I have done it. Sometimes I have been hostile to people, and although I can justify my actions, those are the moments I most regret.

I believe repeatedly rejecting others who need help endangers me, too. I'd rather risk my physical safety than my peace of mind. I'd rather live my life acting out of mercy than save it by living in fear and hostility.

So here where we live on that afternoon one summer when the woman was sinking like the sun on my front porch, I made my choice.

I opened the door.

The True Value of Life

Sudie Bond Noland

I believe in the power of forgiveness and compassion. This act is so hard for many, including myself, but it is important to show an understanding heart when someone is faced with discord. It gives a chance, for some, to repent for their previous mistakes. I have come to learn the true nature of forgiveness over the years, beginning with a personal experience of mine that was life changing. It happened when I was thirteen.

I was riding with my friend's family in their car down a two-lane highway, when we were hit head-on by a drunk driver going sixty-five miles per hour. Eddy Jo was his name, and he was so intoxicated that one more beer would have killed him. Thankfully, everyone survived, although I came away from the accident with chronic back and neck pain, migraine headaches, and part of my kidney missing. It has nearly been a decade, and I am still in pain every day. Pain forever is a lot to swallow when you're young.

In court, the judge sentenced Eddy to twenty-five years in prison to make an example of the situation. I didn't understand the full extent of this when I was thirteen. I was upset about how the ignorance and actions of this person had changed my life forever.

As time went by, I began to think of Eddy in jail, away from his family, and how he must feel. I received letters from him, stating his remorse for his actions, and yet I couldn't bring myself to write back. I was so overwhelmed with so many different emotions that I didn't know what to say.

This is something I have been thinking about for a long time—something that I haven't looked at with a magnifying glass until this essay, actually.

I have now forgiven Eddy in my heart for his actions. I know that when he got into his car that night, he was too inebriated to even realize he was driving. He had a problem that got out of hand and out of his control.

I know Eddy didn't hit us as a malicious act in any way. It was a mistake, an awful mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. I have the courage now to write to him. He will finally know how I feel when I send him this essay.

Forgiveness and compassion can be amazing feelings when you let them into your heart. People deserve a second chance to do the right thing, especially when one may have been caught up in circumstance. I don't think Eddy deserved twenty-five years in prison for his actions.

I am forever changed by him, but in some ways it has shown me the true value of life. Even though I struggle every day, I think it has made me a stronger person, a more loving and compassionate person.

For that, Eddy, I thank you.

An Invitation to Dialogue

Madhukar Rao

I believe in the power of simple questions.

Back in 1974, when I was sixteen, my family moved from Massachusetts to New Jersey when my father changed jobs. It was a difficult transition for me: I was a junior in high school and had to leave the friends and community I'd known well to get used to new surroundings and attend a school where I was a stranger.

I remember how lonely I felt that first day of school. I was among the first students in the cafeteria at lunchtime, and I sat at a table in one corner of the large room. As more people filtered in, I noticed that all of the students sitting near me were black, and all of the white students were sitting on the other side of the room. I found this very strange—as if an invisible dividing line stretched across the cafeteria. This voluntary segregation was new to me, but I stayed where I was.

Some of the black students gave me odd looks as I sat alone, quietly eating my lunch. Partway through the lunch period, a tall, muscular, black student, whom I'll call Jake, walked over and stood across from me. He put his hands on the table and leaned forward. With his face close to mine, he firmly said, “Aren't you sitting with the wrong kind of people?”

Immediately, my fight-or-flight response kicked into high gear. What should I do? Should I defend myself? Should I let him intimidate me and undermine my self-respect? The other students suddenly became quiet, waiting for my response.

Jake had laid down the gauntlet, but I decided not to take the bait. I looked at him and innocently asked, “What do you mean, the wrong kind of people?”

He was dumbfounded. He stared at me for a few seconds, shook his head, and then walked away. My simple question had disarmed him. I had neither compromised my beliefs nor validated his racism. I slowly calmed down and ate the rest of my lunch without incident.

This experience taught me that simple questions like “What do you mean?” hold tremendous power. They signal a desire to understand and a willingness to listen. My simple question met intolerance with tolerance. I could have argued my right to remain where I sat or told Jake to leave me alone. But becoming defensive probably would have led to a lot of shouting—and I would have been lucky if it had ended there. Instead, I had invited him into a dialogue.

I like to think my question challenged Jake to confront his racism, but I'll never know for sure. I do know that when I saw him in the cafeteria the rest of that year, he looked at me and nodded as he passed. Although he never smiled at me, I took his acknowledgments as a sign that we had made a small connection.

I believe in the power of simple questions. Simple questions signal humility and an openness to listen nonjudgmentally. They also serve as powerful weapons against intolerance.

Homeless but Not Hopeless: A Man Finds His Soul

Les Gapay

I was homeless for six-and-a-half years. But I believe not being hopeless got me out of it.

When a recession caused my writing and public relations business to tank in 2002, I gave up my apartment in Palm Springs, California, and started living at campgrounds in the back of my 1998 Toyota pickup.

I usually stayed in the southern California desert. But every summer, when it got too hot, I drove to camp in Montana, where I once lived.

At first I was still making a little money, so I camped at developed campgrounds with flush toilets, tables, and fire rings. But after a few years I was subsisting mostly on Social Security retirement and couldn't afford such luxuries. So I stayed at primitive campgrounds with outhouses, or once in a while at a Walmart parking lot. I ate at campgrounds or fast-food joints. I got on lists for subsidized senior housing.

In winter, the desert temperatures dropped as low as thirty degrees at night, and I snuggled up inside my sleeping bag on top of an air mattress. Sometimes I had to pile blankets atop my sleeping bag and sleep in several layers of clothes. When it rained, I covered my leaky camper shell with a tarp.

In the back of my truck at night I meditated on the Lord's Prayer. On Sundays, I went to church. I prayed for my family members, including my three brothers and two adult daughters, whom I never heard from. At first I prayed for work and a home, but eventually I accepted my situation, and it caused my stress to disappear.

Like Jacob in the Bible, I once asked God to come down and fight me like a man. But it did no good to argue with God, as Job also learned in the Bible. But even getting angry with God, I found, was a form of prayer.

I was better off than many homeless people. I had my truck and some Social Security income. I became eligible for Medicare, and that was a blessing with medical bills. My life wasn't so difficult if I didn't dwell on it.

My faith, once minimal, deepened as grappling with the difficulties and the evils of life turned me more to God. I knew where I was going in the long run, and it wasn't just to a campground.

In December 2008, I finally got to the top of a waiting list for an apartment in a complex for low-income seniors. Two charities helped me with the security deposit and the first month's rent. I retrieved my possessions from a storage unit, and opening my boxes was like an archeological dig into my past life: a TV, a stereo, suits and ties, photos of my daughters in happier days, a computer that was now obsolete.

After years of being homeless, I finally had a bed to sleep in and my own bathroom and kitchen. I could even use a heated pool to soothe my aching muscles. Every day in those first few weeks seemed like a gift.

The whole experience was a life lesson in the power of hope and faith, something that sustains me even today.