As I described in my previous blog post, on Monday morning I awoke to an epiphany. I realized that I wanted to “help” some of the homeless people I had encountered the day before and I would do this by taking the money that I might have spent on gambling (if I was actually a gambler) and give it to people who were asking for help.
With this plan in mind, I headed down to the cashier, got some cash and then left the Palazzo heading toward the Wynn with the intention of retracing my steps from the day before. I was hoping (expecting) to find both “The hungry old panhandler” and the “Woman with the white dog” along the way but was willing to help anyone (or so I thought).
Shortly after heading out for my walk, I discovered that I was very prejudiced against males who were asking for money. I think it would have been different if they were a veteran, old, disabled or even conscious. At one point I remember thinking, “that guy has a nicer pair of sneakers than I do, he looks well fed and physically fit, he just needs to go get a job!” This pattern of withholding help and feeling justified for doing so, continued throughout my walk and I didn’t find anyone “deserving” until I started walking across the footbridge between Caesar’s Palace and Bellagio. As I started across, I noticed a woman in a wheel chair who had her bald head covered with a bandana. I'm now embarrassed to admit that as soon as I saw her, I felt relief because “Finally! I found someone deserving of compassion!” OTL
As I approached, her head was lowered and she appeared to be praying while holding a little cup that had some change in it. I had intended to just put the money in her cup and walk away, but as I drew near she raised her head, looked me in the eye and smiled in a way that seemed strangely (disconcertingly) familiar. After the money had dropped, she said “Thank you, have a great time!” I stupidly replied “You too!” and immediately regretted my word choice. Muttering to myself as I walked away thinking “I might as well have said and be sure to get the double-shot of chemo next time!” After beating myself up for a few minutes for my word choice, I vowed to have something more intelligent to say to the next person. It wasn’t until I was on the opposite side of the road that I realized what I found familiar about this woman was that she had the same “feeling/tone” as one of my Zen teachers. It was as if my teachers “spirit” was wrapped in a different body and again I felt like I was being taken care of again. Like the universe had put the perfect person in my path to help me get over my initial reservations about freely helping someone in need.
I felt good as I walked back to my room but I wanted/needed to do more. I also knew that I had very little right to judge who I helped, but I knew I needed to come up with some kind of criteria or else I’d be broke really fast.
Michael
Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:20 and I ran through my morning routine. I knew I wanted to go for another walk and I decided to try and be less judgmental about those who were asking for help. As luck would have it, the first person I came to was male, young and as I would find out after I made my donation, intoxicated and almost completely unconscious. As I dropped the money into his cup I said “good morning” with the expectation that he would look up, make eye contact and realize that he wasn’t completely alone. Instead he slurred out “shank ou” as his head lolled over to the side. “oh, well. That didn’t go as expected” I thought as I walked away. I didn’t really see anyone else until I returned to the footbridge between Caesar’s palace and Bellagio.
On the footbridge, instead of my teacher from the previous day, I noticed a guy playing guitar (poorly but very enthusiastically) and singing in a low gravelly voice. As I approached him, I was considering just dropping the money into the hat in front of him but I remembered the last time I did that (in Boston) the street performer scolded me because “he wasn’t asking for charity, he wanted people to reward him for making their day better through his music”. With this experience in mind, I decided to stop and listen for a few minutes.
After he wrapped up the song he asked me if I was a ZZ Top fan and I said “Somewhat, I just like to hear people play their stuff”. He nodded his head and asked “do you play?” and I said, “I used to”, to which he replied “what does that even mean?” I said “kids, work, life gets busy and you forget to do the stuff that you enjoyed doing when you were young”. He kind of gave me a knowing look and then asked “Have you been up all night?” and I said, “No, I’m still waking up”. With a look in his eye that indicated he was having a tough time “figuring out my angle” he asked me “how old are you, 50?” and I said “no, 44” and he said “ah, the grey hair threw me off”. I asked how old he was and he said “58, but I look older because of all the drugs”. I said “ah”. We chatted for another couple of minutes and then I said thanks for the conversation and reached down to drop the money in his hat. He appeared to be genuinely grateful for this and reached out to shake my hand and introduced himself as Michael, I introduced myself and as we parted he encouraged me to “come back again, I’m here most days”.
As I was walking back rehashing the conversation, I couldn’t help feeling like I had just had a conversation with a wise old sage. As I continued to pull the conversation apart I realized that everything he’d said could be taken in several ways. Perhaps all conversations can. But the words that I recalled when I was about halfway back to the hotel and caused me to laugh out loud were “no, I’m still waking up” and I realized, either way you cut it, I’ve never spoken truer words.
Damaged children
On Wednesday morning I woke up at 5:00 and despite my desire to go help some more people, I knew I needed to give it a rest. I felt like I was starting to reach another breaking point and decided that I just needed to write down what had happened over the past few days and the result was the majority of the story up to this point.
Unfortunately, the universe wasn’t willing to give me the entire day off.
As I mentioned in “A Window into the Soul”, on Wednesday afternoon, when I entered the Waterfall atrium in the Palazzo, I recalled what Siddhartha said about life being a river and what Don Miguel Ruiz said about people being an accumulation of wounds. As soon as this happened, I felt uncomfortable but I stuck with the feeling and I suddenly understood something amazing. Every single person in that atrium was once a child and what I was seeing was the cumulative damage that the world had done to them (a child) and that since time is an illusion, I was basically looking at damaged children everywhere. Time seemed to slow down at this point and I felt such an amazing amount of compassion for everyone that I saw. To me, the most amazing thing about that experience is its reproducibility. Any time I feel a lack of compassion for someone, I just need to remember that I’m dealing with a perfect being that is acting this way due to trauma that they’ve suffered. The problem is remembering this before the ego gets emotionally involved!
Victor E.
Thursday morning I slept in until 6:00 and then got up and went for another walk. I had only made it about 250’ before I saw a guy sitting down with some signs out that indicated his need for money or “any little bit of love”. I had actually seen the “any little bit of love” sign on Monday morning but this was after I had the "lady with the white dog" experience, so I didn’t stop to investigate (I wasn’t ready at the time anyway). In any case, I noticed his eyes were clear and he was alert but for whatever reason I still walked by him without saying anything or giving him anything. I felt shitty about this because my intention was “to give without judgment” but I also felt awkward about going back. However, about 20 feet later I noticed a guy in a suit walking towards me and when I made eye contact with him his expression was lifeless, not in a hopeless kind of way but in an emotionally dead kind of way. The “suit" kept walking towards me until it became clear that I was expected to move out of the way, which I reluctantly did. As he passed me I realized he had just shown me about as much respect as I had shown to the “any little bit of love” guy. And I knew that I needed to turn around or else I’d be taking a step closer to that suit.
So I turned around and walked back. As I approached he looked up uncertainly. When I reached him I squatted down and without saying anything I just handed him some money. He said “thank you” and I said “no problem”. He didn’t seem to know what to say or what I wanted, so I said “how are you this morning?” and he said “fine, I could be worse. How are you?” I said “I’m good right now but it’s been a really strange week.” He said “oh yeah, how so?” I said “well, I’ve been really busy with work for sure but what I’m having a hard time with is…” and I choked for a couple of seconds because the next word I was going to say was “suffering” and saying this to him seemed completely inappropriate. When I continued, I said “I’m having a hard time with all of the people who need help. I don’t know what to do. I mean I’m going around and giving people money whenever I can, does this help or hurt?” He thought for a couple of seconds and said, “well, any kind of financial support is greatly appreciated, but more than that it’s nice to be treated like something other than sub-human”. He went on to tell me that he had been a master electrician, had a nice house and a truck, but when his son was born he and his wife had felt something was missing and they decided to “find themselves” in order to make as good of a life for their son as possible. He said that somewhere along the way they had a couple of bad turns and none of their plans worked out and here he was traveling the country. He also said “I have no regrets, I’ve met the most amazing people in the world as well as the worst, and I wouldn’t trade what I’ve learned for anything.” Around this point we were interrupted when a fight broke out between two drunk homeless people and then one of them came over to make an impassioned case about why he was right and the other guy was wrong. As he was making his case to me, I looked deeply into his bloodshot eyes and I could feel the pain that had driven a child to become this man and I knew I had to walk away. As I stood to do so, I asked the former master electrician “what’s your name?” and he leapt to his feet in a very excited way and extended his hand and said “I’m Victor!” and then I introduced myself and said “It was really nice to talk to you” and he said “you too”. At this point, he seemed to recall something and said “hold on for a second” and reached into his bag. He pulled out a piece of paper with something written on it, handed it to me and said “I’m working on something and I’m hoping to get to California so I can finish it”. I said “Oh great! Good luck to you!” and we said a couple of final things before we parted ways. I quickly read what was written on the paper but didn’t really process it. I just knew that it was special and for the remainder of the walk I treated it like it was a priceless work of art. I still do.
A circle completes…
As I continued my walk, I saw another homeless person sitting on the sidewalk up ahead but before I got there a small woman walked up to him and gave him a small bag of groceries. He smiled and said “thank you” and encouraged her to come back to talk but she smiled nervously and said “No, no…” and started walking away towards me with clearly pleased that she had done something to help. As I continued walking I couldn’t help thinking that she missed a huge opportunity to connect with another human being and that her noble intentions and apparently helpful action were really only done to help make HER feel better. I say this because after the conversation with Victor, I realized that just dropping off a bag of groceries (or giving money) without talking to the person does not acknowledge their humanity, it just feeds the homeless animal.
Yeah, and then I realized she’s a small woman (maybe a 100 pounds soaking wet) who’s probably dealing with serious physical security concerns and that to muster up the courage to walk up to a homeless man and give them anything could represent the bravest thing she’s ever done.
Yeah, and then I realized I would have done even less than she had done before my conversation with Victor.
I gratefully acknowledged the lesson and decided to keep that in mind as I continued.
A few minutes later I (once again) arrived at the footbridge between Ceasar’s and Bellagio. As I started to walk across I noticed my teacher from Sunday was there. I started walking straight towards her with a huge (I’m sure dopey looking) smile on my face because when we made eye contact her face lit up like the Sun. As I gave her the money I said “Hi! I saw you earlier this week and I was hoping you’d be here. My name’s Erik.” and I held out my hand. As she shook my hand she said “I’m Marlene, how are you?” We talked for another minute and as the conversation started to wind down I just said, “I’ve got to get going but I hope you get well” and she said “thank you so much, have a great trip”.
I am.
And another circle completes…
When I got back to the hotel room I took a hard look at what Victor had given me and was just blown away. It’s basically the same thing that Siddhartha said when he found what he was looking for and had been on my mind since the beginning of the week. There’s a picture of it at the top of this blog post.
Ripple effect
Given all of the stress leading up to the show, I had planned to use Thursday to close out any action items that I had captured from the various customer meetings and then treat myself to a 90 minute Vinyasa class and follow that up with a deep tissue massage. The Vinyasa class was taught by an instructor named Nikila (like Tequila) and she kicked my ass! My massage therapist (Tanya) was great and helped with some of the lower back pain that I had developed from standing on the concrete exhibition floor. After the massage Tanya brought me into a lounge and told me about their two additional treatment rooms; a heated Himalayan salt room (which was nice) and a “blue light” wave pool room that was awesome! It was like a planetarium but instead of projecting stars onto the ceiling, they had a pool of water in the center of the room over a light. Something was creating ripples on the surface of the water and the idea was to sit back and watch the ripples of water on the ceiling. It was very calming. As I sat there and thought about the week, I realized how alike human interaction and the interaction of waves are. When you watch two waves collide, you notice that they pass through each other and come out the other side looking almost identical as before but changed slightly depending on the shape of the wave that they interacted with.
Almost final thoughts
I realized a number of things during this trip.
In order to make space for a new pattern in your life, you must allow an old one to die. So in reality, the best thing that can happen to us continuously die and be reborn.
Focus on who you want to be and BE that person. Don’t spend a lot of time looking back on who you were previously or try to view who you are now through the eyes of who you were. You’ll probably just think what you are currently doing is silly.
Even if it is silly, if it’s authentic, then rock that shit! Who cares? Your life is going to be over before you know it and the details of your life will almost certainly be completely lost to history anyway, so ENJOY YOUR TIME.
If you want to grow as a person seek out the situations that make you uncomfortable because this is where change happens.
Follow your gut, if you believe you are here for a purpose, quit wasting time and make it happen.
An unexpected twist
About a month after returning from Vegas, I traveled to North Carolina to attend my nephew Nick’s High School graduation. While preparing for the ceremony and the party I had some absolutely amazing conversations with my family and friends. Each of these conversations could be a blog post, but one conversation really stood out to me.
After I described my experiences in Vegas, a family friend (Jim) said: “When we give to the homeless we focus too much on what we are giving them and not enough on what they can give to us.” I’ve since realized there’s a lifetime of wisdom to be mined from that one statement alone.
Final thoughts
I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all of this but a picture of what I want to BE is starting to take shape. I’m pretty sure getting there will involve a few more (perhaps a lifetimes worth) of blog posts.
Oh yeah! I realized the most important thing in life is to learn to love unconditionally. Once you do everything flows.
Namaste!
