The Small Act I Wish I Had Chosen

What’s on my mind?

A moment I wish I could do over.

My family recently spent some time in Chicago celebrating Jett’s last days as an 11-year-old. We had an amazing trip together and went to a Cubs game.

While we were standing in line waiting for the ballpark to open, an older gentleman in a wheelchair was moving through the crowd, calling out to people.

He was heckling them, I guess.

That is the best way I can describe it.

His comments were funny and mostly harmless. He was good at getting people’s attention. The more people tried to avoid him, the more entertaining he seemed to find it.

I assumed he was homeless.

He had no shoes. He looked rough. He seemed to be looking for attention, money, or both.

At one point, he rolled over to my family and spoke directly to my kids. He told them they should always point out pretty girls and tell them they were pretty.

My kids laughed. A few people nearby laughed.

I avoided eye contact.

Eventually, his attention moved somewhere else. We went into the game and did not talk much about it.

The next day, we stopped at a restaurant before leaving Chicago.

He was there again.

I do not know whether he remembered me, but when he saw me, he said, “Hey, you. I know you. You look different.”

I ignored him.

Jett poked me to make sure I heard.

I put my arm around Jett’s shoulder and moved us both out of the man’s sight.

Jett looked confused.

“That guy was talking to you,” he said.

His reaction made perfect sense.

I have taught him to respect people. I have taught him that ignoring someone who is speaking to you is rude.

Then he watched me do exactly that.

I explained that I did not know the man and that he was “just a homeless person looking for a handout.”

Jett said, “Oooohhhhh.”

He understood.

That is the part I wish I could do over.

Not because I believe I did something terrible. I was in an unfamiliar city with my family, and I made a quick decision to avoid a situation I did not understand.

But I keep thinking about what I taught Jett.

I wanted him to understand why I was ignoring the man.

Instead, I may have taught him that some people can be ignored.

I made up an entire story about someone I did not know.

Maybe he was homeless.

Maybe he was struggling with addiction, mental illness, loneliness, or something else I could not see.

Maybe he was simply an eccentric older man entertaining himself outside Wrigley Field.

I do not know.

That is the point.

What do I wish I had done?

Nothing dramatic.

I simply wish I had acknowledged him.

I could have looked at him.

I could have smiled.

I could have said, “Good morning.”

That small act would have cost me nothing.

More importantly, it would have shown Jett that compassion does not always require a grand gesture.

Sometimes compassion is simply refusing to treat another person as invisible.

This brought back a memory from my childhood.

My family was driving home on a rural road when we saw two unfamiliar men walking through the ditch. My dad stopped and asked what they were doing.

They were collecting cans they could return for deposit money.

My dad invited them home for dinner.

They sat at our family table and ate with us.

Afterward, my mom packed food for them in brown paper bags and placed a $20 bill in the bottom.

My parents were not rich.

They were raising 11 children on a farm.

There were plenty of reasons to keep driving.

My dad stopped anyway.

I sometimes wonder what conversation happened between my parents before those men came into the house.

Maybe there was no conversation.

Maybe my mom simply saw two more people who needed to be fed and made room at the table.

That memory has stayed with me.

So has a phrase I may have picked up from my dad:

“If someone wants to steal from me, they must need it worse than I do.”

Compassion does not mean abandoning judgment, safety, or boundaries.

It means trying not to lose sight of the human being while deciding what those boundaries need to be.

That is the lesson I wish I had demonstrated for Jett.

Sometimes it only asks us to look at someone and recognize that their life matters too.

That idea connects closely to the work I am trying to do through Iowa Worm Farm.

Regeneration begins by looking differently at what has been dismissed.

Food scraps are treated as waste.

Dead leaves are debris.

Worms, insects, fungi, and microorganisms are easy to ignore.

But healthy soil works because those parts remain connected.

What we throw away becomes food.

The organisms we rarely notice do some of the most important work.

I do not want to stretch the metaphor too far. A person is not a food scrap, and human suffering is not a composting lesson.

But the underlying habit is similar.

Look closer.

Question the story you told yourself.

Do not confuse appearance with value.

My parents showed me that lesson at a dinner table many years ago.

I had a chance to show it to Jett in Chicago.

I missed the moment.

But I can still talk to him about it.

I can admit that I wish I had handled it differently.

I can tell him that I made an assumption about someone I did not know.

And the next time a small opportunity for compassion appears, I can try to recognize it before it passes.

Our children learn from the values we explain.

But they probably learn more from the moments when we think no explanation is necessary.

Compassion does not always require bringing strangers home for dinner.

Sometimes it begins with something much smaller.

Look at the person.

Acknowledge them kindly.

Let them know, even for a moment, that they are not invisible.