sitting in discomfort

I had a really interesting experience on the train today. I was riding down to my client site, to work on this TV project in their lab, and the train had a number of passed out, still drunk, or very tired looking people from last night’s revelry. After awhile, one of those passengers started yelling loudly. As if angry and fighting with a lover over a cell phone, but then it became clear that he wasn’t on the phone. He was just yelling profanity loudly.

People started to leave the train car, or move further from him. The loudness of his voice bespoke violence, and anger, he seemed a dangerous fellow. About middle aged, with working class clothes, and a flushed expression that implied chronic drinking.

My first reaction was humor, something unexpected and wakeful for my morning commute, but that lead to concern, then a sense of sadness and the suffering of the situation for everyone. People were uncomfortable, and then I noticed he was across from a young woman. He kept looking at her, and yelling out things about her breasts at the top of his lungs. She must have been horrified or petrified, she didn’t move and looked out the window ignoring him. And I started thinking about how upset and sad he also must be, that all this venom would come out of him so publicly. Or perhaps he was mentally ill, and then how sad or isolating that must feel.

My first reaction to all of this was to push away the experience by thinking about it all, by labeling the fear and the discomfort and explaining it away. I watched as other people would alternate from staring at him in disbelief, in fascination, then look away in fear and confusion, then look again. But I decided to make a practice out of the experience, and to sit in the discomfort and fear and not react to it as much as I could. To sit in the emotional fire.

Almost as soon as I made that promise to myself, he stood up and walked back to where I was sitting. He asked if he could sit next to one of us in that section. The woman across from me left, saying “I’ve had enough. You’re crazy.” So he then sat across from me in the newly vacated seat and leaned over to direct his next outburst my way.

He was wearing headphones, but fiddling with the radio tuner so not likely listening to any station. He put out his hand, clearly wanted to take my attention. But by then all I could see was his pain, beneath the anger. I was almost tearing up experiencing this man’s hot anger and disconnection. I looked in his eyes with concern, I just wanted to know that he would be OK. I took his hand and kept asking him if he was OK. He seemed surprised slightly, but continued. I kept asking him if he was OK, then what his name was. He finally had to take the ear phones out of his ears to hear me. I asked again if he was going to be OK, I think he heard my actual concern. He sunk a little and was less puffed up. But he then went on about the world and how screwed up it was.

At one point he got really angry, and he punched at full force the metal wall of the train - so hard I immediately thought he might have broken it. There was a flash of fear, this man was really dangerous. He could get violent in a flash. But I also had honest concern for his hand, that he might have broken it. It reminded me of a story told by a person I met, when he saw a tibetan lama and was sharing some of his worries and frustrations with the lama, the lama suddenly stopped him mid story - noticing that one of his fingers was partially missing - asking him “oh! what happened to your hand!?” with genuine curiosity and concern. And at that moment his hot issue that he had brought to the meditation master vanished. There was just a human connection, a physical connection. I remembered that story and reached out for his hand, “oh! is that ok? is your hand ok?” turning his hand over gently.

Here I was with this very loud, possibly violent or drunk or mentally ill person, sitting in my own the fear and discomfort and I just held his hand for a moment. We talked some more, then I asked him how he was feeling, in his heart, in his chest, and I pointed at and tightened my own chest as if to explain that yes we all have that vulnerability.

And then something really shifted. We both talked about that void you can feel in your heart, and how nothing can really fill it. He offered that drugs, and sex, and pornography, didn’t seem to fill it. He asked in his crude way why women were not open to him. Well, he shouted the question really. It struck me as ironic, how we often complain about things but are blind to our own contribution - how our world is interdependent with our actions. He was furious about something, dropping hints that his heart was broken by a lover, but his complaints were so conceptual. The world was broken. Women were broken. So I kept trying to bring him back to the physical sensation in his chest, in his heart, about all this. And that seemed to do the most good.

Soon my train stop was approaching. It felt good to talk with him, in spite of the risk that such a connection would bring violence upon me. He asked for my phone number, wanted to continue talking. I politely refused to give it. But then as I stood up I just felt concern for him. I put my hand on his shoulder, in his sadness he seemed so easy to console. And I wished with all my being that he would take good care of himself. And without really saying anything, he stood up to say goodbye and gave me a good, strong hug. It felt like we both needed it. I stepped off the train nearly in tears. The world is full of people in so much pain. And that pain then seems to bring more and more pain onto others. Doesn’t matter if you’re in the wealthiest country in the world, full of convenience and privilege. We so easily find ways to torture ourselves.

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