Seeing Myself in Everyone

I've mentioned previously the happy confluence I'm experiencing between the practices of daily attention walks, deep reading, and visual arts like photography, how they seem to work together in training my perception and helping me see instead of merely look. Example: on Monday evening I had a discussion about Walt Whitman's Drum-Taps poems with my friend Krista. We spoke of war, the cycle of violence, why we (humans) cannot seem to remember how awful war is, and then, because of what she's studying and trying to figure out in her own life, we started to talk about how to build community and how to pay attention and care for the people we encounter. This is difficult work. The need "out there" is great, insatiable even. So much loneliness, hurt, suffering. I know I regularly close myself off from this. One example, when I come to a traffic light and there's a person begging on the corner, I try not to make eye contact. Previously, meditating on Whitman's Song of Myself, I've been trying to see myself in others instead of categorizing and then dismissing them or thinking I'm better than others, or worse in some way. I have a long way to go.

Then on Tuesday, I scanned the morning news and clicked on this story, not for the "murder" part but because I was curious about the "photos" and "friendship" part. If you didn't catch this story, take a few minutes to read it.

Photograph Field of Brush 2023 by Andrés Mario de Varona, featuring Aaron.

I'm a sucker for stories about deep friendship, no doubt because I prize friendships over family, and I wish everyone could experience a friendship like this one between Andrés and Aaron. Both parties in this friendship--a 48-year-old Native American from New Mexico and a 23-year-old Cuban American from Miami--strike me as having uncommon beauty: the photographer, alone, jobless, and new to Santa Fe, posting himself outside Allsup's and making himself vulnerable to rejection, hostility, or apathy by trying to talk with strangers and Aaron reciprocating and opening his community to the photographer.

The story is upsetting not just because Aaron was murdered and that the Santa Fe police's handling of it appears to be callous and dismissive, but because even before this, so few of us recognized and appreciated his beauty. Even if I had gone to that Allsup's, I bet I would have gone out of my way not to engage, either with Aaron or Andrés. Andrés writes,

"I thought about Aaron and realized that he had never once described himself as a homeless person. It triggered me into thinking about all the people who had dismissed Aaron for being 'homeless' or a 'homeless Native' without ever talking to him and giving him the time to be a person."

And this isn't about some kind of condescending charity or pity, wherein we who have much do the judging and gazing upon another, maybe toss them a few bucks. Aaron was living a life he chose, one that happens to be a little different than what most choose while also being tied to a whole host of assumptions about people like him that makes us think we know all about him. I don't get the sense that he wanted his life to be other than it was. He also seems to have enjoyed an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity mindset: he shared what he had, cooked for his community, found refuge for them, and, importantly, really saw people. He noticed when there was a need. He seems to have seen accurately and deeply and with compassion.

He saw himself in everyone. I hope someday I can correct my vision enough to say that I see myself in him.

I am very grateful to Andrés Mario de Varona for sharing this story and his photographs, for letting me get to know Aaron a little and to mourn his death.

A P.S. and actionable step: because this story came through a national media outlet, I hope the Santa Fe Police Department gets a slew of phone calls and some pressure to keep trying to solve this case, or at the very least, change their departmental culture and procedures to enact more humanity in their public service. Maybe you could make one of those phone calls?