Witness

I spend a great deal of my moving time in the city on foot. While I am no stranger to buses and trains, if I have the time and the energy, I am walking. You see a lot when you're walking. When you walk, you are close-up with the good and the bad around you. You are a witness to acts of kindness and acts of destruction. While exercising your legs, you can't help but exercise your eyes as well.

One day this week, I traveled some of my standard paths by car--time and schedule called for it, and my legs didn't mind the break. I saw some of the same things I do on foot, but they were different. The kindness seemed farther away. I could not hear most of what was going on, and I was too consumed with following traffic rules to appreciate what I saw. And the destruction--well, I was witness to that too. And, while I missed being close to so many things from my walks, I found myself grateful for my place in the car as I passed by sights and circumstances that I could live without experiencing up close. With my windows up and my doors locked, I may have been a witness, but I was a witness from a distance.

Despite my relief at being that safely enclosed witness, the following day, I was back to my routine as a walker--honestly, the city lends itself much more to navigating without a large, hard-to-park vehicle. So, I continue on my way, hoping each day to see more of the good, and just enough of the not-so-good to be aware without being afraid. I suppose that, in one way or another, we are all witnesses. We just never quite know what we'll see. And how we will choose to see it.