Tuppence a bag...

I spent the other morning working at Tim Horton’s. They have food there, internet when I need it, and nice tables. People come and go in a constant flux of coffee-seekers and bagel-eaters. It’s a relaxing and productive place to work and there are always people to watch when I raise my head from the papers in front of me and look around. This particular morning, a youngish man approached the restaurant pushing a shopping cart that contained two suitcases and a coat. He was rather dirty looking, and barefoot. He rummaged around behind the suitcases for a few minutes and pulled out a pair of ratty looking shoes and slipped them on his feet. Then he sat down at the mesh table and pulled out some grungy dollar bills. He seemed to count them for a few minutes and then came inside and bought a bagel and a bottle of orange juice, which he took with him back outside. Sometime later, he came in and got a small soda or maybe some water. Then he took off his shirt and, using it as a pillow, rested his head on the table, basking in the warm October sun that always feel so comfortable and fleeting. For awhile, nothing else happened.

I looked up again after reading a paper or two and saw an older man come out of Tim Horton’s and hand the young man a bagel. I could not hear what words were exchanged, but the young man looked as if he were going to cry and I could tell by his body language that he thanked his benefactor several times. The two parted ways. I watched as the young man sat back down, gingerly unwrapped the sandwich, and slowly began to eat. I also watched as he picked off a few pieces of bagel and fed them to the seagulls that constantly hover around that particular Tim Horton’s. I smiled. It was a lovely moment – man being kind to man, and that kindness being passed forward. And then the moment was ruined. An older man inside Tim Horton’s turned to me and began to complain that the young man was feeding the birds. “Isn’t that something,” he said, “a man gives him a bagel and he feeds it to the freaking birds.” I shrugged and did not answer. His cynicism made me sad but it was not, to use a phrase I heard the other day, a hill I wanted to die on. So, I did not argue.

I was relaying the story later to J, who understood my frustration. It was not as if the young man threw all the food away and it is not as if he had not been clearly grateful for the kindness bestowed on him. Rather, as J said, he understood what it meant to be hungry – and even in his own need and dire straits, he shared that kindness with other living beings around him. As I walked away from Tim Horton’s, I should have been touched by the beauty of the moment, but instead I was saddened by how much others feel they need to judge situations and events that they only watch from afar and never truly understand. That young man had little – but he still shared what he had. Others could learn something from him – but instead, the only other one who observed chose to judge him for not valuing a gift in a way that aligned with some arbitrary moral code. I, for one, would rather live in a world of warm sunshine and birds in flight than sit by the garbage can in Tim Horton’s making judgments.

So, feed the birds, young man. Feed the birds.

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give” – Winston Churchill