Welcome to Desk Notes. Here’s a brief essay that I wrote after returning home from a walk earlier this week. Something that used to happen quite often, I realized, doesn’t happen quite as often in today’s world. Thank you, as always, for reading.
Charles
At one time I was accustomed to giving directions. I’m taller, I generally look outward, make eye contact, study my environment, I don’t believe that my appearance is too distressing, and I’m also one of the few adult males from the twentieth century who prefers to dress like an adult—which is a recipe, I think, that once prompted strangers to approach me when they were lost. I remember friends, colleagues, pointing this out, too, that strangers seemed to talk to me with a surprising frequency. But this description comes from around fifteen years ago when I lived in New York City, a place where hundreds, if not thousands, of people are lost and wandering the streets at all times.
What I realized this week, however, is that I’m rarely asked for directions nowadays, and that the commonplace interaction that I had with strangers—which I didn’t really mind—slowed down quite a long time ago. With nearly everyone having access to a map in their pocket this isn’t exactly a mystery. There’s no need to force a moment of connection, for the wonderful awkwardness of interrupting a stranger.
My awareness of this change in behavior came when an old man, for the first time in a long time, stopped me on the street and asked for help. Coming around a corner, I saw him standing near a curb, watching with suspicion as two kids walked past. When I came closer he took a step forward and began to ask about a street that I didn’t recognize.
My reaction surprised me. It wasn’t a decision, really, but much closer to a reflex. I turned, looked behind me, then down the street, from where I had just walked, in a way that I sensed in the moment as rude. I’m not sure whether it was his step forward, the atypical nature of asking about a street in our world, the fact that I didn’t recognize the name, or, perhaps most especially, my awareness that triggering a moment of disorientation on a city sidewalk is the adult version of offering a child candy. My survey of the scene didn’t linger, it was hardly a fraction of a second, not enough time to be noticeable, before I took in the car parked askew just a few steps away, the one with a license plate from a different state, and with an older woman studying a relic—a large map that was printed on paper.
I found the street on my phone—which startled him to the point that I thought he might attack me for being a wizard. Instead, he listened, then asked me to repeat the directions, before he repeated them back to me, checking that he understood. And I appreciated this little memorization exercise, the fact that he didn’t even write the directions down: if he visits the same street in a few months, I believe that he’ll find it, though if I go there tomorrow I’ll look at my phone beforehand.
That was the entire incident, the incident that I walked away from feeling a little glum, bothered by my reflexes. I don’t know how much I’ve changed, or how much the world has changed, or perhaps just how much my perception of the world has changed, so that a straightforward question sparked such a defensive, wary posture. I’m not too concerned about or focused on crime news, endlessly reading about shootings and stabbings and the latest horrors to appear on our newsfeeds. But I would like to believe that I’m wise to some of the basic schemes, plots, machinations, deceptions, tricks, ruses, and gambits in our world, with crime an industry that’s forever at the forefront of innovation.
And I also remember blinking in Milan just a few years ago: an open trunk, a pause to retrieve a key, a few bags, a front door, a passing bicycle, and a disappearing handbag. The trick requires distraction and misdirection, so that you look one way while what’s important comes from another way. At least the little boy in me who crawled on his knees on the second floor of the local library looking for books about pickpocketing—no luck, incidentally—can appreciate the artistry in some forms of sin.
Yet that instinctive survey of the street bothered me as I walked away. Even if I could justify it, I’m not sure if that’s the posture that I want to exhibit for the world. My sense is that many people underestimate how much their way of viewing the world—expansive, restricted, assuming safety, assuming risk—redounds, shaping their perceptions, shaping what they discover, in much the same way as looking for red flowers causes you to see red flowers. There’s always a tradeoff, a decision about what risks you want to take in life, and I believe that it’s too easy in our boisterous, turbulent world of apparent dangers to discount the risk of always worrying about dangers.
So: I think I care a little more about meeting people, about encountering the world with openness, about maintaining the attitude that once felt so natural, even if the consequence of that choice is a little more risk.
This isn’t willful blindness, to simply ignore obvious dangers. It is to realize, instead, that I don’t really want to inhabit the sensibility of the person who is too vigilant about threats, as that tradeoff doesn’t seem worth the cost. Keeping a fire extinguisher in your kitchen is probably a good idea, though you’re wasting your time and distorting your focus if you keep a dozen and check them every month. There’s a cognitive tax, one that is most likely a hindrance to a well-lived life, when you view the world through the lens of what could possibly go wrong.
I am recently retired & my office was close enough to the building entrance that people would ask me directions on an almost weekly basis. But in order to ask me, they already had a badge to get in. My guard was naturally down in helping strangers. I’m now thinking: is my guard up enough to not fall for trickery? Though being of retirement age I’m probably viewed as an easier mark. An eternal optimist, I cant let fear take over. I’ll be fine.
My constant state of vigilance mostly revolves around child safety. Kids on bikes with no helmets, babies baking in the sun trapped in strollers, parked cars hiding children ready to dart out, small children standing on the curb by a busy street, handing children sparklers to play with on July 4.... The list goes on. My son is now 34, but my mom vigilance has never let up. To it I've added hyperawareness around the threat of a mass shooting in the grocery, shopping mall, in front of a courthouse, etc. It's exhausting.