Bordered Perceptions, Separated Realities

The word 'neighbor' can manifest itself in many ways: a friend, a neighbor in proximity, a neighbor in experience, a neighbor in belief... Catholicism chooses to define the ambiguous word as simply a fellow human being. Love thy neighbor, we're told, and within reason (however without God), that is the way I choose to live. Love beams from my body and compassion sometimes has no ending point. It's difficult for me do dislike someone; I try to see the good in everyone. What happened to me then on Easter Sunday was shocking and disappointing, however necessarily dealt with.
As I was considering borders that exist and are sometimes hurtled in Seattle, the first thing that came to mind was this odd relationship between the homeless and the housed that occurs in all big cities I have become familiar with. The two entities live as neighbors, one asking for a cup of sugar a bit more often than the other. However the giving process is not only multi-faceted, it is a ritual in which each party gains an equal amount. The sugar exchange of food or of money occurs mostly first with a question, then with an action, followed by satisfaction on either side of the exchange. It is a selfish deed, to give someone money; we do it because it makes us feel good to do something worth while or to help someone in need. Everyone wants to be a hero. To say giving is moved by selfishness is not to downgrade the goodness of the deed nor is it to say that it is impossible to reside in selflessness, because I think it is, however in this particular case it's well known that one dollar will not establish any residence.
So then in order to give money, one must believe a reality which most of us decide to be untrue. I remember once when I was seven or eight telling my mom that I had the ability to tell which homeless man would use money for good and which would buy drugs with it. Come on, no one is that perceptive. But there is a line there between a reality we think we know and a reality we want to believe is true. There's always been a border between the experience of the poor and what we, who don't have those particular sufferings, think is the reality (whether it be more positive or more negative).
This separation of perceptions of reality made itself more than prominent on Easter in an area of Seattle with which I'd never been. After a brunch, clad in pearls, dresses, and easter heels, my friends and I were standing outside a Safeway waiting for our bus. I pointed out a purse resting on the bench, unattended, with bottles of alcohol and a pair of shoes inside. I knew a man

had been in that same spot before. With no other motive but rationality, I mentioned to my friends that this purse was probably stolen and just to be aware of their surroundings and hold tight to their belongings until our bus came. The man returned, grabbed the purse, and stood near us. We played it safe. A woman, raggity and messy as the man was, walked out of the store with an apple and the knife she was cutting it with, a utensil sharp enough to be a weapon. The man gave her the purse and he walked behind us into the lip of an alleyway aside the store and called his armed friend over to him. Seeing what was in her hand and witnessing the man gesturing to our bags, my friends dragged me away from the threatening couple. The two came closer to us so we moved inside the store to wait for the bus and discussed the very small likelihood of either of the long-haired, unkempt ones doing anything, but because she had a knife, the precautionary distance was important.
Suddenly, our understanding of reality was completely altered. Every person in baggy clothes outside the store looked, to all of us, a threat of some sort. A man was running from point A to point B outside the store then to point C inside the store and one of my friends immediately said, scared, "but why does he have to be running?" Another man who was standing outside looked to me much more frightening than he did when we passed him before this incident; he was eating a corn dog inside the store and I felt warmed by the image. However now, my original perception of what was had been completely modified and everything I saw chilled me.
The border had been widened, extended, swollen, thickened.
The bus came. We had made a decision that if these two threats (as we now knew them) were to get on the bus, we'd simply sit near the driver. We took the first three seats open on the bus. As they loaded, the couple didn't even glance at us and I began to feel awful for the assumptions I had made. The running man got on the bus with his clearly non-impoverished little girl and her well put together mother, pushing her daughter's stroller. I then felt quite honestly horrible for letting myself feel threatened by a false reality I had built up in my head.
I feel that this is an important border to both experience and cross. It represents how scared our culture is of the unknown and how little faith we have in those who suffer. How we, to mention my favorite quote in Pocahontas, "think the only people who are people are the people who look and think like [us]," and why that's so incredibly wrong. How that border ironically marks the entire history of our nation and how we've been trying to overcome it since the conquistadors first set foot on American soil.
That the most important thing, overcoming the border, is so incredibly difficult, is painful and possible only through personal experience. We need to overcome our tendencies to stick our noses in the air and start being honest with ourselves and each other. Admitting that we are selfish beings but that we still care is key (and, in my generation, exceptionally important). Being open to other realities that aren't our own. Trying to be okay with notions we might not personally think are right or moral, but accepting them for the truth that they are. Each of these actions is a project which, once accomplished, will add a step in the ladder to hurtle over this wall. Then maybe we can at least shorten the divide so that we can see our neighbors and smooth over the division.