Just A Little Closer to the Edge

The other day in town as I sat sipping one of the last three-dollar coffee drink indulgences of my life, I watched a white-haired Asian woman picking through the garbage receptacles. She was a tiny lady, but she looked even smaller because of the large bulky trash bag she was carrying on her back. She worked efficiently, pulling out aluminum cans and plastic bottles for recycling, then moving on, industrious and resourceful. It seemed to me that she was part of the economy and ecology of the street. As she drew near I smiled at her and thanked her for rescuing the recyclables. For an instant she looked a bit startled at having been spoken to, but she was friendly and responsive. 

"Do you believe it?" she said, "People complain me. The city complain me. No one want to see me." 

Yeah, I could definitely believe it. And it was easy for me, sitting there with that $3 coffee, to feel momentarily good about myself for having been willing to acknowledge her, as though I were more enlightened or compassionate than those others somehow. (Don't worry. I don't take myself that seriously; it was a fleetingly fatuous sensation.)

The truth is, I have always known it could be me foraging for survival on city streets, streets way harder and colder than these. Maybe gathering recyclables was a hobby for the woman, like those people who rake through thebeaches at day's end, discretionary income. Then again, it might have been her livelihood or a necessary supplement.But I can easily imagine myself collecting cans, hoping for coins ,becoming invisible, living so close to the edge that any misstep could drop me deep into oblivion. 

My husband scoffs when I talk this way. "You?" he will say, "Not even close. You would never get to that point." And then, as an exasperated afterthought he'll add,"God, you have such a warped idea about yourself."  

Maybe so. But I remain astonished that my life has been so good, and I attribute it more to luck than to virtue. 

And perhaps that is a better frame of mind in which to go through life. At the risk of sounding pessimistic and redundant, there are challenging times ahead of us-- lean years a'loomin' -- and resourcefulness without bitterness or self-righteousness will come in handy. We are inextricably interconnected with people we like and don't like, people we are willing to look at and those we would rather not notice. 

I feel a little closer to the edge lately, a little bit harder to see.