You could set your watch by him.
Each day, like clockwork, he stands at the mouth of the street,
digging through the twin bellies of metal and waste,
just before the garbage truck arrives to swallow it whole.
Sometimes, he returns, hopeful that the city’s discards
might offer him a morsel to hush his hunger,
a garment to shield him from the night’s cold hands.
To watch a man forage for dignity in filth—
it unsettles, if your heart has not hardened to stone.
“He messes up the streets,” she muttered.
“He should find work—who, in their right mind,
would dig through garbage?”
Yet her words carried more than annoyance;
they bore the weight of a world divided.
The clean and the unclean, the worthy and the waste.
I asked her, “Would you, or anyone you know,
hire him, as he is?”
Silence.
How easily we measure our own worth
against those beneath our feet.
How readily we build our thrones
on the backs of those we pity or despise.
I have stood where she stands.
Once, I too judged from my high place,
believing struggle was always a choice,
that misfortune wore a face I’d never wear.
But life humbles, unravels,
teaches through the bitter hand of experience.
I have known the slide from grace,
the sting of judgment from those
who would not lift a finger,
yet found the strength to point.
No man would make a home of hunger
if he could help it.
No man would choose a dustbin
as his daily bread.
Desperation bends even the strongest backs,
hard times make strangers of us all.
And yet, we look down from our places of comfort,
casting stones from houses built on fragile luck.
We call it choice. We call it consequence.
We call it anything but what it is—
a man, doing what he must to survive.
So the next time you pass him,
or another soul sifting through the ruins of plenty,
why not give, instead of judge?
Why not offer bread, or a kind word,
instead of the weight of your disdain?
If I am to believe the scriptures,
he is no lesser, and we are no greater.
Grace does not measure.
Love does not count coins before it gives.
So let us choose grace,
while we still have the privilege to give it.
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