the circle game

One of my dearest memories as a child is one I don't quite remember. My mother told me she caught me crying while watching an episode of Peanuts. I wasn't wasting my tears for hunger or because I tripped and skinned my knee. It was because at that young age, I was feeling empathy for perhaps the first time. I was crying for someone, albeit Charlie Brown or Linus. For some reason, this resonates in my mind as the realization that I could feel.

There are times in my life that I dearly wish I could feel as purely as I did at that moment. To cry for someone else, not for my own. Too often, I walk by the extended hand of a homeless man -- a man reduced to sprawling on his stomach in public -- hoping for the few coins pedestrians toss into his box of desperation. Daily, I walk by the old woman with the hunched back, dejectedly selling rolls of kimbahp and homemade sandwiches for less than a dollar. Repeatedly, I walk by the vacant eyes of young people slumped over on the sidewalk, too intoxicated to notice the puddle of their own vomit they rest on. These times, I wish I could shed tears for another being, placing myself in their dirty rubber shoes, their fraying hairnet, their soiled clothes. These tears do not materialize.

For every sad thing in this world, there are brilliant reminders of the joy we can find. When I come across some students, their smile, their mere face lights up my darkened heart. When I walk past a caressing couple, their loving glances and embraces remind me that love stories still do prevail. When I see a young person helping an old woman with her groceries across the street, the good in life is affirmed.

Perhaps this season of apathy will pass. Perhaps I'll be able to feel as I did as that young child. Perhaps in the near future, the tears that are stored up at the moment will overflow into a series of waterfalls for love, for change, for others.

"And the painted ponies go up and down.

We're captive on the carousel of time.

We can't return, we can only look behind --

From where we came.

And go round and round and round...

In the circle game."

-joni mitchell, circle game