Beings

"Empathy is really important… Only when our clever brain and our human heart work together in harmony can we achieve our true potential."

Today when I opened my car door to drive to Santa Fe for my cancer treatment, an eighteen-year-old young man asked me if I could give him a ride. I invited him into the car. I asked if he had a job. He said he had had several jobs, but nothing at the moment. He said he wanted to go to the area in which there was a Walgreens so he could try to sell some kind of pipe, which I assumed was marijuana-related. He seemed very low energy, but maybe he was just trying to avoid my questions.

Later this evening I was leaving the local library when a 38-year-old woman asked me for a ride to the post office. As we drove, she changed her destination to a casino. She said she had a players card and the casino was offering to put 5 dollars on the card for her to play the slots. She was very weepy. She said she was homeless and had been for two months. I asked her if she does drugs, and she admitted to using heroin. She also told me she had two daughters living with her father about 30 miles north.

I tried to show empathy to both of these beings, but my brain was not clever enough to be of immediate help.