When despair meets a few prophets on a train

Today I was in a rough spot. 

I was sitting in the social work lounge trying to read a case I was actually interested in, Plyer v. Doe, but I couldn't stop thinking about how little I am contributing to the world around me. Now to anyone who would have asked me and conducted a thorough psych eval they might find that I met the criteria for depression. Feeling of hopelessness. A pervasive sadness that lasts for over two weeks. Bouts of crying every other day.  One could say that this afternoon I needed meds or the gold standard treatment for almost any psychopathology, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. 

There is, however, another way of looking at this. Freud says that the difference between melancholia (what we know today as clinical depression) and mourning is that in mourning you can point to something specific that is causing your despair and in melancholia the reasons still dwell in your subconscious and have not quite risen to conscience. I could tell you exactly why I was so sad, why my despair was present so maybe I did need meds today or maybe I needed CBT or maybe I needed precisely what followed. 

Teary eyed I left the social work lounge.  Not having a ride and not really wanting to be at BC for any longer, I decided to take my chances and begin bearing weight on my broken ankle towards Commonwealth Ave. I had not been on a walk in some time. About 7 weeks, to be exact. I was able to let my thoughts flow freely while I stared up at the sky and the winter trees whose branches extended like the limbs of a dancer hovered over me.  It was beautiful. I missed contemplating beauty in this way and I remembered just how important walking has been to me all of my life. 

As I approached Commonwealth Ave. I didn't want to stop walking. Though my arms were certainly less than comfortable due to the crutches, I could not bear the thought of being trapped in a car. So i crossed the street towards the train instead of ordering the Uber like I had planned. 

A young man looks at me and stares. Clearly, he is on the autism spectrum. He asks me what happened compassionately. I answer, evasively. As I get on the train and it starts to move I lose my stability and a blind woman and the autistic young man (at-least according to my assumptions) rise to help me. Then begins the conversation. 

The blind woman begins telling me about how she had broken her wrist some ten years ago or so. She assures me that I'll be okay. She talks about the slight difficulty she has with reading brail because of the injury but that other than that she is fine.  We talk about people with disabilties.  i tell her that this time, being without the use of my right leg, has been enlightening and has given me a glimpse of what life might be like for someone who is permanently disabled. We talk about how the United States is so individualistic and how asking for help is so difficult here sometimes. She tells me about how people may react to her when she asks for some help reading a bus schedule, "WHAT DO YOU WANT?" they might interrupt before she can finish her sentence.  But not everyone is that way.

I ask her where she's from. I find out she went to BU for social work all of these years ago and suddenly the world opens up.  She tells me about her counseling practice, about how disempowering it was for her clients. I breathe a sigh of relief.  I tell her how discouraged I am with social work, how demeaning I think it is to people.  We talk about the nature of social services and how everyone who has ever been a client has a traumatic story about or in relation to a social service provider. She tells me about the moment she knew she needed to leave the field and how all she wanted to do was sit with people and be present in their suffering. She is articulate and patient and there is a confident quietness about her spirit.  She is wise.  

She tells me about a book she is writing about the nature of evil, about the research she is doing, about the articles she has read. She assures me that the problem is not that I have nothing to contribute but that the system I am working within will chew me up and spit me out but that she has no doubt that I will find my way of making a contribution to the world.   

A woman chewing some sort of candy bar loudly asks whether she could sit in the empty seat between this woman and I where my crutches lay.  She came off as uncouth and abrupt. She looked slightly unkept. And if you looked at her closely you could see that the teeth she did have left were blackened and yellowish at points.  My immediate reaction was to be slightly offended by the fact that 1. she had no regard for the fact that she was asking to take the place of my crutches unapologetically and 2. she was interrupting a wonderful conversation. But as the blind woman continued to tell me about how suicide hotlines are more concerned with liability issues in recent years than they are with sitting with someone in their despair the unkempt woman between us begins to speak and to sympathize. She begins to tell us her story about her suicidality as a teen. She stops and lets us react.  I tell a story about Pastor Claire and her immense compassion and her authenticity towards the homeless. The woman then talks about her friend who couldn't receive detox services in the emergency room without claiming he was also suicidal.  She opens up about loosing her children to social services, about how they called her mentally unstable and about how her real mental instability came when they took those children away.  The blind woman looks at her calmly sympathetically and says, "I am so sorry. I don't know what to say. That' s terrible."  

"There is nothing to say," the woman chimed in. The blind woman touches her arm, noticing the pain that is coming up for this poor woman.   

I ask the blind woman more about her book, about the title.  She tells me that she is writing about the presence of evil. She is interested in the ways in which evil is present in the lives of everyone.  She looks compassionately at the woman sitting between us and says, "like what you experienced with having your children taken from you. That was evil.  But you at least know to recognize it as such.  Some people deny that this is precisely what that was. And I think everyone who has been through social services has had encounters with evil." 

Yes. To sit with the reality of suffering and pain. To not deny it. To not pretend it doesn't exist.  To not even wish it away.  

When we arrive at Park Street, the blind woman asks the other woman, "Would you kindly make sure the way is clear so that Annery can walk through safely?"  The woman smiles and says, "of course." She feels responsible. She clears the way for me.  

On the red line I stand in front of the long white bearded man who is always talking about how colleges ruin everything. As I stand in front of him in the packed train, he is the only one to offer me a seat.  Unfortunately he is large enough to take up two seats and I don't quite fit next to him. But at least he offered.  Everyone else was too busy paying attention to their iPads and books or daydreaming to notice that i was trying to balance on my crutches.  

I had met this man a few months ago when the weather was slightly warmer and I was talking to a philosophy major from Duke University whose first time it was exploring the city of Boston. He spoke excitedly about his classes. We talked about the intersection of biology and philosophy.  We talked about bioethics and a priori knowledge. So when we encountered the bearded man loudly going on what seemed like a delusional rant about colleges we chuckled. 

This time, however, I heard him with different ears.  

"paying for tuition? Are you kidding me? When you have the Boston Public Library at your disposition?" he said.  He talked about the Dred Scott case, about the Blacks upon whose backs the great institutions of our nation were built and how they were kept out of those very institutions.  He talked about how the most educated people used their knowledge to oppress others. He talked to everyone and he didn't care whether they listened or not. Clinically, one might say he endorsed loose associations, circumstantial speech, flight of ideas. You might say delusions were present. You might even say that the delusions were of a persecutory nature and that the man is psychotic.  Or you could say, "Sure. He might not be completely oriented to people and space."  But is he right? Is he observing and speaking about something true? 

In Jesus' day some may even have called him a prophet, akin to John the Baptist eating locusts in the desert or Moses claiming God spoke to him from a burning bush. Does this bearded man with disheveled appearance have anything to teach us about the limitations of institutions? in fact, what he is talking about is not far off from what Jesus said in the beatitudes--whom he quoted in his monologue today on the train, might I add.  Or what Paul said in the book of Ephesians about the powers and principalities of this world.  Are all of us who claim to be sane just fooling ourselvMes by living day to day feeding a system which some would say, which he would say, which the blind woman would say, which the woman who lost her children would say and which Jesus probably would say is inherently oppressive.  

Perhaps instead of social work I should be praying, "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." Perhaps I should take heed to Jesus' words, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's" or St. Augustine's admonitionsion that the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of man are separate entities.   

In the end all I needed today was to see a glimpse of God's kingdom come and I saw it on the trains I took home today.