Reality Check

This blog post is a little different.
For me it's a challenge, for you maybe a story.
Anyway, I guess I would be writing this to my friends and people I see often, maybe not.

I was in San Francisco all day. My family and some friends and I were doing the tourist thing. We got some food, walked through golden gate park, and shopped a bit. As our friends left to catch the BART train to their hotel we jumped back into the car around 9:30.

The pedestrians streamed across the streets before the walk sign was even lit hurrying to there next obligation. Behind them graffiti on the sides of buildings conveyed profane words and images. I sat in the van as we muscled our way through start and stop traffic. I watched the different people that walked by. Each one different. But they just seemed all the same to me. Hearing a yell I looked out the front window at the sidewalk in front of us. All I saw was a bustle and could hear yelling and arguing amidst the city chaos. My vision centered in on the thick of the fighting to see men crowding around a single african-american man in a baggy white t-shirt. I could see fists flying as they attacked the outnumbered man. One of the assailants pulled out a knife and thrust it into the side of the white shirted man. The manned gripped his shirt now quickly turned red while being pushed into the street by the attackers. He was flung onto the hard pavement as three of the assailants simultaneously kicked him in the stomach, back, and head. Seeing that they were in the middle of the street the attackers fled with backward glances at their victim. 


This all happened at the stoplight. And as we drive forward directed by the green light I stared at the man with a now red shirt. A lady ran to try and help the man, but was stopped by her boyfriend when she tried. All I could do was look at him. Not only him but that whole situation as we slowly drove by. 


 Now here is the part I hate. I felt so disconnected. My eyes had received the information and it had indeed been sent to my brain, but I didn't feel like what I had just seen was really tangible. I knew for a fact that a man was sitting their bleeding to death, but it didn't click. My response to the man's situation was similar to the response I would have in a movie scene. That's how it felt, like a movie. My mind interpreted that what I was watching was but a fictitious scene in some show. That's how I felt. Even though I knew that man was really dying, I felt like it was all an act. That scares me. It doesn't matter if I have any connection to the man prior. I'm watching him die and all the emotion I can muster is an Oh My God help. That is killing me.


Among other ways of processing it, I went to find the root of my disconnect. As I pondered it and prayed about it I thought of TV shows. The way dying characters probe emotion. But not real emotion.


That gave me a reality check. And I mean a serious reality check! If I was having a hard time differentiating reality from fictional worlds than something had to stop. So I cut off the fictional worlds. Because I need a grasp on reality. And apparently my mind can't handle two or three worlds working simultaneously. I'm just sad that it took something so serious to wake me up out of my stupor.