This past weekend in New York City, a homeless man intervened in a mugging of a young woman on a busy street. She broke free and ran, her attacker then turned on the homeless man and stabbed him several times and then fled the crime scene. New York City has virtually every inch covered in security monitoring cameras, but at the very moment that this man was stabbed repeatedly he was in a blind spot blocked by construction scaffolding.
The good Samaritan stumbled and fell in plain sight of one of these cameras, where no less than 25 people walked right past him and he lay there bleeding to death and no one stopped, looked his way or helped. All of the faces of those people are on that video camera. That man died right there on the sidewalk in full view of the world.
What would you have done?
When this was all over the nightly news here in the northeastern U.S. a prominent psychiatrist was interviewed and his explanation was very disturbing to me and this is what prompted me to write about this mindset that we as a nation are adapting.
The doctor was explaining how in our fast paced high tech world, with all of its violence in the media, games, and in the movies, we have become totally desensitized to the suffering of others to the point of no longer caring, it is none of my business attitude, I’m in a hurry and I don’t have time to stop, he’s probably just a drunk sleeping it off, to the point that we can’t tell what is real and what is an image that we see so often that we have adopted a: “… I could care less attitude…”
Those 2 dozen people who passed by him were on cell phones and with other people and didn’t even look at the man laying there in a pool of his own blood.
Shame on them, shame on us for being so wrapped up in our own little worlds that we cannot even stop to see if a person laying in a pool of blood might actually need help.
Today as you go through your own life, pay attention to what’s going on right there in front of you.
If you feel even the slightest tug to do something…..pay for the person in front of you or behind you, perhaps a mother is having a problem with a cart, bags, children running away from her, a person who is laying on the sidewalk, someone who looks distraught, lost, upset, whatever, that is in your life…..think twice before you walk on by……
What have you done today to bring your own world into clearer focus?
