Looking past the wall

9:18 PM on Wednesday, March 20th, 2019 (Claremont, CA)

This thought comes from possibly 2 or 3 weeks ago, when I was riding the Metrolink from Claremont to Union Station one Friday after school. It’s a habit I picked up at the start of the New Year, and is one I don’t think I’ll quit in the foreseeable future. For $10.50, I can get a round-trip ticket that lets me enjoy Downtown LA, and get some work done on the 1 hour or so long train ride there. But on this day, I didn’t do any work. It was a nice week with no busy work I could easily do on the train, so I put on a playlist I liked and just looked out the window. It was a good time; the houses and streets zoom by so quickly that you are constantly exposed to something new to watch. A man riding his bike. Where is he going? How long has he had that bike? Does he like to bike or does he wish he had a car? Some graffiti by the train tracks. Who put that there? Where are they now? How did they so closely mimic Bart Simpson’s proportions on such a large scale? Thoughts like these keep me occupied. They are fairly innocuous, and my mind can easily digest them.

But then we begin to go up high. The tracks are now elevated; the streets and surroundings are now below us. I’m watching in awe as everything shrinks a little and my perspective changes. To the left of the train, I see a big supermarket. It has a giant parking lot, with many empty spaces. Bordering the side of the parking lot that is near the elevated tracks, there is a wall that is about 10 ft high. From my vantage point, I can see into both the parking lot and the other side of the wall, which is a corridor of gravel that is overgrown with weeds in places. And now we are approaching a ragged blue and gray tent that is slumped against the train track side of the wall. Sitting next to the tent on a blanket is a man. He is not moving, and is seemingly staring at his hands. And I look on the other side of the wall, where a woman is loading a large black SUV full of groceries. And I think about how the wall blocking her from seeing the suffering that is less than 20 ft away from her. A human with no stable home, who does not know where their next meal is going to come from. And I think about how neither of them know I saw them both. And I lose sight of the supermarket as the train continues on.

Much like the train, life does not stop. Therefore it is up to us to look past the wall and see the suffering. You may not always be able to help in the moment, but what you see can certainly influence you to make a change as time goes on.