How helping a blind man cross the street made me lament my own foolishness and that of the people around me.

There are those moments in school when you learn about helping the elderly cross the street or helping disabled people in their time of need. I had one such experience earlier today as it was my first time helping an elderly blind man cross the street.

I'm not writing this to virtue signal or anything. Though most postings on social media are about virtue signaling, that is not my intent. I hope by the general self-deprecating and often fault admitting tone of my essays that you'll believe me.

It wasn't the fact that I had helped someone that led me to write this essay but the circumstances that led to it, the oddity of the experience and the tsunami of thoughts I didn't want to let slide to the eternal bank of unrecorded opinions.

The Event.

It was a rather disheartening day. My shoulder injury had progressively gotten worse to a scale of 5 out of 10 on the 'pain meter' where I would wince at moving my arm above my head. Naturally, this meant I had to alter my training regiment for the day and break the normal strength work routine. Prior to the demoralizing gym session, I had spent a guiltily unfocused period watching the Sunday NFL games instead of spending time on 'productive' pursuits towards my goal.

Though I've made considerable progress from mentally beating myself up every day for not spending every waking hour to further my mission in life... it's still a work-in-progress to not resort to the default of chastising myself for not being "productive and effective" with my time.

Never the less, it was on the way home from this mental strife from the day that I saw, what was obviously, a blind elderly man crossing the street. I say obviously because he had the long blind persons' guide pole that no non-blind person should be seen using. Through a combination of his age and disability he only made it halfway before the light turned red. He was stuck between the northbound and southbound lanes. But he did not know that.

He continued walking but I heard no warnings shouted to him or saw no help. I was crossing the perpendicular street of this 4-way intersection when I saw the Toronto Transit bus blaze a few feet in front of the elderly man as it slammed on its horn. I'd like to believe the driver was providing a warning to the elderly man but the immediate thought was "why couldn't the bus just stop and wait?"

I really could not imagine anyone in the bus or the cars around being so important and so in a rush that they could not wait 30 seconds to let a blind man cross the street. Would they not appreciate the same courtesy in their shoes?

As I crossed the street I was hoping someone closer would go over and help him. It seemed like the normal, maybe even humane, thing to do.... right? In this world of equality for people, rights for animals and plants not a single person was choosing to go help the man. By the time I crossed over the people were just staring.

In hindsight, I realized that I should've looked to check for oncoming traffic but I just remember walking over and telling the gentleman that I'm here to help. Then I was joined by a lady who had come over to hold him on his other side. All I remember from her face was a look of disgust.. maybe it was akin to my shock that no one was helping this man until we got there.

After we crossed the street together I asked him where he was trying to go. He replied he wanted to take the Westbound streetcar. It was across the street, the way I had just come from.

Regrettably, my first instinct was not to personally take him there but to be the idiot who pointed the direction to a blind person. Then I made another set of idiotic mistakes by telling him to go North and physically turning his body North as he proceeded to walk South.

Realizing how pathetic my initial course of action had been, I decided to wait for the light and escort him to the station and asked for one of the transit attendees to help him get on the streetcar when the next one arrived. This only took one minute of my time.

The entire episode took three minutes of my time. I probably spend longer flossing my teeth. A bit of comparative perspective there.

I then crossed the same street back home and was hit with a flurry of thoughts.

Decline in Compassion and True Bystander Effect.

Of the many thoughts that crossed my mind, a major one was the complete neglect by the bystanders. The cynic in me would believe that they would rather pull out their phones and record this for Instagram than act. I believe that it's a natural instinct for people to help those they see in need. At least, it should be. It's this act of compassion that forms one of the factors that differentiate people from other animal species (my opinion, not sure of the scientific evidence).

Was it the onslaught of the digital era and 'offices where employees choose to "slack" each other than talk in person' the reason for this apparent lack of compassion I saw among people? Maybe and maybe not. There have been evidence of 'bystander behaviour' in the past where I think it was in Brooklyn where an entire apartment of people observed a woman getting raped and murdered without a single person calling the police because they believed others would do it. Either way, the average selfishness of humanity was once again displayed in this moment. It's nothing to be surprised about. Most lacked the incentive to do anything and I understand that. One can only criticize the system that's created such a lack of incentive than the individual. Human wiring has always been programmed to be self-centered and requires an alignment of incentive for action and that is on the environment.

Communicating with One-less Sense.

Another thought... an overwhelmingly shocking one... was on how difficult it was for me to tell a blind person directions. Street names, cardinal directions, pointing.... none of it worked. It revealed to me how one constraint on the five senses could prove to be an amazing exercise on rethinking my default use of communicating directions. In the end, I had to resort to personally escorting the individual but it presented how my default action ignored the individual was blind and could not readily use the information I was telling him.

A friend once told me of a product design interview where he had to design a clock for a blind person. From this experience, that particular interview question sounds like a great exercise for helping one hone the ability to communicate crisply. It could maybe be taken a step further in interviews and at work to help one empathize but also learn to work with less.

At this moment, I think something I could incorporate to my direction could be the number of streets one would have to cross and the number of estimated paces the distance would take. It creates an easier picture for people even if they are not visually disabled. I think this might actually be highly effective to do in writing moving forward as well. Because writing is used to create images inside the reader's mind without the use of visual aids (not all writing but some), it may be helpful to consider the audience being blind.

Gratitude and Warmth.

The easy win from this experience is gratitude for the life I have and putting into perspective my own struggles. It's cliche but one can take comfort in cliches being so because they are true.

Supplementing the gratitude is the warm feeling to my heart from helping him. It's commonly touted by many works of psychology that human fulfillment is felt at its peak when one is helping another form of life. So once again, this feeling of warmth and euphoria seems like another easy win from this experience.

But why is that supposed to make you feel any different? Is it because it's a rarity in your life? Much like winning a lottery? If you did it enough would you ever get numb to it like the case for many addicts? The danger for such a thought may be the quick succumbing to nihilism where one stops doing things for others to preserve the feelings of warmth. The other side would be to believe the quantity of 'warmth' one can receive is endless and bountiful.... like a drug that never gets old. I do wonder if there are people who chase this... even if unconsciously.

I won't deny that this warmth... this high.... is one form of motivation for my own life. One could say that part of this journey is me perpetually chasing one of my most proudest moments when I learned what it meant to inspire someone. I always get a pinch of excitement and a hit of 'high' when I get an email from a reader of an essay, listener of a podcast or whomever that says what I do helped them out. It's become a new currency I've come to accept in exchange for my time and a part of me wonders whether this will become a growing currency as the world evolves.