Thinking of The Second Coming outside an LCBO

Judgement of the Nations -- The Sheep and The Goats

(an image from South Yarra Community Baptist Church)  

I'm still troubled by something I saw early Monday afternoon outside the University Plaza LCBO.  As I sat in the car near the door of the store, waiting for Japhia who was inside to make a purchase, I saw the entire unfolding of an altercation between a man and a young, hoodied male.

The man was walking into the store, right behind Japhia.  The hoodied young guy came zooming between them on a stunt bike, missed the man by inches, dropped his bike against the store wall, and made to follow the man into the LCBO.  Rather than just go into the store, the man made a comment to the young guy about his lack of consideration.  The young guy got angry.  The argument escalated as they stood just inside the store door, until the young man abruptly and angrily turned around, left the store, and yelled back at the man, calling him a "f****** nigger,"  latching on to the most hurtful and disrespectful thing he could think of to say, focused on the colour of the man's skin.

The man came running out of the store after the young guy who quickly hopped on his bike and used it to stay a safe distance from the man while continuing to scream the racist taunt against him.  Not once but a number of times.  While the man yelled back, saying he would "get him."  

And I sat in the car not more than ten feet away.  Just watching.  From inside the car.

Japhia, who heard all this happen from inside the store, at least was able to touch the man on the arm a few minutes later when she stood beside him in the check-out line, to  communicate support and care.  Even then she was troubled that that was all she was able to do.

Like her, I would like to have that moment back so I could get out of the car, stand as brother with the man suffering the racist taunt, and make it clear to the hoodied young male that his racist slur is not acceptable and is not tolerated by people around him.

But I didn't.  

Why not? 

It wasn't fear.  Nor moral indifference.  
 
What I remember is that at the time it felt a bit like I was just watching TV.  I was totally drawn into what I was seeing, but somehow it seemed there was a screen of some kind between me and what I was seeing.  It wasn't that I rejected the thought of doing anything.  It's that doing anything more than just watch the unfolding drama didn't even really present itself as an option. Wasn't even in mind or on the table at that moment.  Just didn't exist.

And I wonder, how did I get there?  To that point of radical, unconscious disengagement?

Was it because by the time I got to that spot, I was already feeling depressed, disconnected and resentful from four hours spent that morning in the hospital sitting mind-numbingly through a four-hour test process?  Is that what predisposed me to such terrible disengagement, to merely spectating the social story being written around me without realizing responsibility to take a part in the daily writing of it?

But then ... I wonder if the young hoodied guy also feels that same mixture of depression, disconnection, and resentment in his life, for all kinds of other reasons.  And is that part of why he reacted as angrily, hurtfully and viciously as he did when he was challenged to be civil and respectful of others?

I think I've always found a secret satisfaction in the last two lines of the first verse of W. B. Yeats' sonnet, "The Second Coming":  "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity," because even at times when I seem to lack conviction (or at least, the action that would express conviction), I can still imagine myself in some self-satisfied way as being numbered among "the best" -- superior to, and separate from "the worst."

But now I have to wonder, are the sadly uncommitted "best" and the passionately active "worst" more alike, and on more common ground than I have imagined?  Are I and that hoodied, young male more blood brothers than I know, in our common feelings at times of depression, disconnection and resentment in life?  And really co-authors together more than I admit of the terrible narrative of social unravelling being written all around us -- him by acts and words of vengeful hate, me by becoming mere spectator of the narrative being written. 

I wonder ... what does it mean and where does it lead, to see myself as brother both to the man who suffered the racist abuse, and to the hoodied young male who hurled the epithets with such recentful venom?  And at times maybe more to the latter than the former?