Walking across a busy street in downtown Toronto, I
pass in front of two vehicles stopped at the intersection, side by side. The
men in the drivers’ seats are yelling at each other through open windows-
angry, swearing, name-calling, accusations of being cut off, of giving the
other “the finger.”
“Who do you think you are?”
“Who do I think I am? Who do you think you are, ya, jerk!”
I keep walking. As I get to the other side of the road, I look back. One of
the men gets out, runs around the front of his vehicle, and yanks the driver-side
door of the other car open. He screams at the man inside to, “Get out and do something
about it, big shot!”
Everyone on the sidewalk freezes.
And then, the door to a vehicle behind them opens. A young man
gets out and rushes forward. My breath catches. He is young- late twenties or
early thirties- the age of my sons. The other two are heavier, older by fifteen
years or more. The young man does not hesitate. He throws himself between the
two men in front of him. He looks up into the face of the man who is trying to pull the driver of the other car out of his seat. He puts a hand on the bigger man's shoulder.
And all the time he is talking, looking first at one man, then
at the other, touching their arms, grasping one of their hands in one of his own. His voice is urgent, fast and confident, but he does not
command. He appeals.
"You don’t want to do this. You really don’t. This is not
going to work. You don’t really want to hurt someone. You'll regret it if you do. This
is not who you want to be. If you take the next step, if you hit each other, it
will all get out of control. You don’t want to do this. It won’t work. This is
not who you are. This is not what you want. . . "
He never stops talking. The rest of us stand and watch and
listen. There is no judgement in his voice, no accusation. There is, beneath his
words, some knowledge of regret, an understanding of how good people can behave
badly at times, of how things can and sometimes do get wildly out of control
and real harm is done. Everyone on the sidewalk is very still. We
hear the young man’s words reaching out to the men, asking them to remember who
they really are.
The men hear it too. They slow down. They stop. The man who’d
gotten out of his car looks around as if slightly baffled about how he got
here. He looks at his hands for a moment, and then says, “Okay,” and walks back
to his own vehicle.
The light changes. And everyone drives away.
I can hear a collective exhale where I and others stand on
the sidewalk. I blink back unexpected tears and whisper, “Wow!”
Beside me, a middle-aged man in a grey suit carrying a leather briefcase speaks.“You can say that again. That young man is one hell of a human
being.”
The traffic flows, pedestrians walk on, the city around us
buzzes back to life.
And I say a prayer of gratitude for the young man, with each
breath offering back a thousand times the blessings he bestowed on the two men
in disagreement, on all of us who were there to witness. Oh I know it could
have turned out differently, that he was taking a risk of being hurt
himself. But he led with his heart- you could hear it in his voice. That’s always
risky, but often a choice worth making.
~Oriah House (c) 2015
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