Taps

Sunday 7/19/26

I was sitting in the cafe reading yesterday. There were three girls at the table next to me--young high school students, probably going into their sophomore year. They seemed like nice kids. Not mean or anything as they talked about the things kids this age have always talked about. A break-up, for instance, of two of their classmates.

But these girls could hardly go a sentence without using the word "literally." Like they were incapable of talking without it. Their words were largely this meaningless blur because of it. More sounds to make sounds than words to make sense. That word wasn't just a crutch, but a kind of meaning-reducer, and they were left flailing in their attempts of what they were all worked up to try and say. They didn't have the language to match what was in their head, or what they were feeling. So they just kept saying this word as if that could do the work, span the gap, supply the deficiency.

The day before I was also reading at the cafe. At the table next to me was a couple, perhaps in their sixties, but it can be hard to tell because many people make little to know efforts to take care of themselves physically (and, of course, it's much worse intellectually, mentally, morally, spiritually, because, as we've said here many times, you do have to move some, but our world has made it such that you basically never need to think).

What's interesting about the physical thing is that people either seem to tend their fitness regularly or not at all. That is, there don't seem to be many people who make a point of doing something, at the least--a daily half hour of walking, three trips a week to the gym to work out at their level. They're either all in or all out. I see this, as I have also mentioned, on the streets of Boston. The people you see running are usually in quite good shape. Not all. I admit that I do wonder how long someone who isn't in great shape that I see running will stick with it.

Anyway, these two people were talking about Donald Trump. A phone was used to play Trump clips. This kind of public rudeness is the norm now. People just blasting whatever on their phone sans headphones, subjecting you to it. There's no shame. On the T, at the cafe. In those spaces where people are sat, ensconced, confined, not going anywhere. Hardly anyone in our world has a thought for anyone but themselves. And yet, so many of those same people take to social media and carry on like they're the most pious beings in existences, the best people, the upholders of morality.

This couple was so uneducated, so ignorant, but you could tell they were someone's "regular" middle class neighbors with a house on the block in the suburbs. They went to school, almost certainly college. You think that at some point--like to even get through high school--you couldn't be as ignorant as these two people obviously were. I don't mean just because they were playing Trump clips at the Starbucks. I mean in the things they were saying. In their adulation. Their voiced prejudices. There was this blindness to their words. As if they saw nothing for what it was.

I thought about dumb people I knew in high school. I don't think they were this dumb. The issue was often more one of behavior than being too stupid to do the work. It's unlikely that these two people were once just too stupid for...middle school. They sounded like incredibly dumb sixth graders. And I don't think they had previously been that, or basically been that al along. They couldn't reason. But it was worse. It's like if you showed a picture of an apple to a small child, and said, "What's that?" And she'd say, "Apple!" And mom would respond, "Good!" These people, mentally, wouldn't be able to handle the apple question. They'd respond, "Camel!"

I think what happened here, and happens so often, is that people warp themselves. And they get warped. But they play a part in that second form of warping as well. They give in to warping. They in effect say, "Hey, stuff that can warp me, how can I help you warp me all the more?"

It's like basic language skills. When you're in third grade, you know how then and than work. Or you did once. Maybe that's beyond a higher percentage of third graders now than it once was. I'm sure that's likely. But those same people who had those "skills" in third grade don't have them anymore, at thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy.

At the table on the other side of me were two women in their eighties. They don't meet up that often. They were glad to be able to "get away" for an hour on this late Friday afternoon. Their topic of conversation was a friend of theirs who they both spoke of as a kind soul who is struggling a great deal in their life. They were concerned for their friend. It was quite obvious, just as was that they both felt at a loss and there was nothing they could do, practically speaking. No way to turn off someone else's pain. Or provide a solution to their problems.

When we feel this way, and when it's true, too, we run the risk of not doing what we can for someone because we conclude there's nothing we can do. That is, we equate any available doing, if you will, with an outcome that is or contributes to a solution. The faucet wasn't shut all the way off, so what do you do? Turn the knob fully. Problem solved.

But we are doing something for someone when we are there for them regardless, when we make sure that they know they are seen and heard and--this is crucial--that what they are experiencing, what they're going through, what their situation is, is understood to the absolute best of our abilities. That it is seen. Whatever that is, for what it is. That's what it often means to both see and hear someone else, and to help them. You can't just up and leave, or not be there, because there's no knob atop the sink to turn to stop the water from coming out.

Meanwhile, you had another Trump clip being played on the other side of me, like that was the most normal thing in the world, to be out for a cup of coffee and sharing Trump soundbites with the person you're with and everyone else in earshot. This is just me at a cafe reading a book. You see these different generational things that say much about our world. Where it's gotten to, where it's heading.