My neighborhood offers its share of challenges like everywhere else, but it comes with a powerful and unexpected perk. When I first moved in and introduced myself at the congregation I no longer attend, they commented that I lived "in the rich part". Ok, there are far more affluent and exorbitant homes, but I have been here long enough to understand why they thought I was better off than they are. They are everyday people- people who work every day just to make it from this one to the next. Like the movie "In Time", they're happy to wake up every morning with more time, energy, and money than it will cost them that day. Every day, in every way, they are doing the best that they can to be ordinary people.
I am frequently self-deprecating about myself. When I feel ugly or overweight or poor or undesirable in any other way, I go shopping at Wal-mart. I don't know what's going on with people who shop there, but they look sad, heavy, and tired. I've watched some of the cashiers visibly age, and I feel bad for the people who shop there because I know most of them aren't nearly as happy as they portend and pretend to be. Mostly, I think the people proximal to this store bias the results because they can't get any further with their walkers, wheel chairs, etc., in order to shop. THey shop at Wal-mart because there's nowhere else they can go. They don't have the money, the mobility, or the mentality, even if their clothes, their cars, and their cash-filled wallets proclaim a different story. Some of the people who work there can't do any better because they have tattoos, criminal records, or barely managed a GED. Even when I drove a forklift for Wal-mart, many of my coworkers disliked me because they knew one day I would leave and go somewhere better.
Walking the neighborhood, spending time at sidewalk level with them, gave me perspective in troubling times and helped me understand them. I see some of the same people every week in the same places at the same time weather permitting, and so it's become partly a real community. I notice when they are gone, when things change, and when something might be wrong because I'm aware. I notice things they do not see. I see them doing things they think matter. I see that some of the "homeless people" aren't but that some of the other people aren't far from actually living on the street. They're no longer everyday people to me. They are my neighbors. They are children of God, and maybe I'm here to be their neighbor rather than just the guy in the house next door.
As much as I am frustrated by my struggles, the more I learn about other people and their plights the more grateful I am for my own trials. This semester alone, I had students go through divorce, family death, job loss, a new diagnosis of epilepsy, exposure to tuberculosis, dog attacks, and a host of other things I am sure of which I am not aware. Last year was a particularly difficult one for me, and this semester, it took a toll working six days a week, but I know that my life is enviable in almost every way. Considering the hand God deals me, I play very well, and the hands dealt aren't awful, they're just long on odds to win. When I pray, I thank Him for an ugly but reliable car, a conditioned body, a job that pays more than I need, and freedom from the shackles of a loveless marriage. I don't want to trade anyone for their place. I learned from my hiking buddy that everything comes with a costs; his metabolism and devilish good looks come coupled to alzheimers, so, like his father before him he'll look great but have no idea when he's 80 that he doesn't have to get up early for school tomorrow.
I am not a superhero; I'm an ordinary man. Every morning, I try my best to live an ordinary life, the best I know how. Every day, I hope to have enough hope, enough energy, and enough motivation to get through the day. I know that they're not as happy as they look and that they're not as prosperous as they look. We all just need someone who believes in us and cares about us. I can smile at them, get the door, help them carry groceries, buy them gas, give them a jump, give them a burrito, pay them a compliment, etc., all of which I have done. One night, as I walked away after helping, I heard the mother tell her kids, "See there are decent people still in the world". I know that everyday people won't necessarily make a great partner for me, but I can be a hero to them every day in ordinary ways. I am a disciple of God; everyday people are my business.
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