A Case Study in Reactions & Regret
A few weeks ago I took a bus downtown to meet some colleagues at a Free Palestine rally. I was looking out the window when we stopped at a corner. Outside, on the sidewalk very close to the curb, a woman snoozed in a wheelchair. Her head bobbed toward her chest as she breathed. Every time her head bobbed, her wheelchair inched closer to the curb. The brake wasn't on.
If she didn't wake up, she'd spill right over the curb into the bike lane. My heart pounded. Her head bobbed again.
I felt a scream immediately rise—wait, she's going to fall! I looked around quickly: the bus windows were all closed so I couldn't call out to her, and the bus was likely to pull out any second. The next reaction suffocated the first—in an instant, hesitation and resistance sucked away all the breath from that scream.
Then there was my self-conscious, aware self, analyzing my first two reactions almost in the same minute I had them. What feels important here is to learn about all these reactions, and learn from them, so I can respond differently when something similar happens in the future. So here are some more details:
My first reaction comes from an initial, unfiltered impulse and innate sense of humanity: I'm not going to let this woman get hurt. The next reaction wrenches me from my humanity by prioritizing the superiority codes of my acculturation: stay away from those who have less, who are considered less. It also protects me...from painful moments in the past and imagined discomforts in the future. Altogether, this second reaction produces a stormcloud of obfuscating thoughts and feelings:
She might be drug-affected, or might be sleeping. What if she's overdosing? I don't have Narcan, know nothing about it except its name. I might end up having to take her to the hospital, then I might stay around because she has no one else and I'll spend my day getting all wrapped up in her life.
The windows don't open, they're too thick to bang on. The bus driver is so far away and besides he might pull out into the intersection any second. Someone else might see her and help. Maybe the sound of the bus pulling out will wake her.
She's looks economically challenged. Oppressed by multiple intersections of oppressed identities: disabled, Black, old, poor. None of this was her choice, I'm sure, and I'm not judging her, at least not intellectually. But I'm also not jumping up to make sure she doesn't get hurt.
If I do get out the back door, what if she falls right when I get there and hits her head and there I am doing another rescue?
The third reaction is like a participant-observer, coming in with analysis that both keeps me in my head (and away from my heart, where the humanity impulse lies) and sometimes successfully overrides the second reaction to get me to actually act (either in the moment, or later). Here's what some of this analysis looks like:
Nothing I can do will get this woman a lifetime of healthcare, or safe lodging, or the income to support her physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. This knowledge casts its own pall. It's a learned paralysis. It's also not an excuse to do nothing.
Almost anything I could do would create a disturbance; it'd be embarrassing. This shrinking away is an old and automatic response, a way I developed to cope with a childhood home noisy with drama and emotion. The bus, in that moment, was not that home.
It's not like I wouldn't know what to do if she did get hurt. I have lots of first aid training. Years ago I had to deal with the trauma of being the first responder for four different head injuries. My habit of avoiding anything similar is strong.
Of course the woman fell. She tipped right onto the concrete, face first. She didn't hit her head—I know this, although I didn't think I watched. The street was almost empty, but a man from up the block ran to scoop her and her wheelchair upright. The bus pulled out. All of about 30 second had passed.
Even with all my anti-oppression training, even with the life changes and commitments I've made to prioritize mattering, I still carry the training of my station as a white-identified, middle class American, the habits and coping mechanisms of my upbringing, and the sensitivity of past pain. I regret that I didn't respond differently; I feel motivated to learn as much as I can from this incident and to respond differently next time. There will be a next time; there will be a million of them. I'll keep building my capacity, holding myself responsible but not beating myself up, and staying alert to my most heartfelt, initial, intuitive reaction: that everyone matters.
April 2024 Back to Blog Home
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