The other night while walking down Broadway, past all the shops where Yale students milled about looking for ways to spend their money, a young man clad in lavishly-simple slacks and a Yale sweatshirt stopped to rummage in his pocket for a cell phone, or perhaps a pair of keys. As he extricated his prize, a slip of paper fluttered out, landing behind him. He turned, leaning forward on one foot and peering down at it like a critic ascertaining the value of a painting. Deeming it worthless, he turned and, with all the nonchalance of a shrug, continued on his way. A stony grimace formed upon my jaw. As I approached him, I said (with practiced cool), "You should really pick that up."
Surprised, he faltered mid-step. He looked at the paper behind him, no larger than a post-it note, now clinging moistly to the ground as if fearing for its life, and then back at me. "Are you serious?" His voice--half laughter, half venom--dripped with self-righteous incredulity. Exasperated, I gave him a withering look that said something along the lines of, Fine. Reap the benefits of your Ivy League education and your own undeserved wealth while thoughtlessly polluting the city around you just to preserve your own phony dignity. See if I care.
And I walked on.
I know what you're thinking. For one, I shouldn't be lecturing strangers, unknown volatile quantities, especially strange men, especially those older than I. For another, who am I to be be preaching? From whence did I earn the legitimacy to do so?
It was the latter question which tugged at my mind as I disappeared down into the darkness of Wall Street. I couldn't truly blame him for attempting to cling to what little semblance of dignity he possessed after essentially being labeled a "Litterbug" by a strange girl, could I? I mused for awhile, before countering against this. He could have feigned ignorance, I reasoned to myself. He could have pretended he hadn't noticed the loss of that insignificant slip of paper and said Oh wow, I didn't notice that! Thanks! and pleased me. Railing against him, I tried to preserve my own dignity, placing myself higher than him in every scenario and fuming all the more.
But I was no better than he, perhaps even worse. I may have possessed superior judgment by being able to distinguish between the wrong-ness of littering and the right-ness of picking up after oneself, but this realization did not make me morally superior. Not in the least. Had I been truly morally superior, I would not have been so vociferous a critic. Instead, I would have pounced upon the slip of paper and tossed it into the trash myself. If feeling especially lofty, I would have run after him and held it out, arm outstretched, scrap pinched between my thumb and forefinger like a gift. Here, I'd smile, you dropped this.
Thanks, he would shiftily mumble, stuffing it into his pocket like a candy wrapper. Guilt would wash over him, but I'd just grin. No problem. And then I'd turn and be on my way with a spring in my step, assured that he would never litter again.
But instead, I chose to preen my own facade of dignity, to wallow in my own self-righteousness. What was I supposed to do, pick up after him along with every other careless piece of shit who walked by? What am I, a sanitation worker?
I was acting as nauseatingly self-absorbedly as Holden Caulfield. At that point, I didn't give a damn whether or not the street got cleaned up. All I cared about was labeling someone else as inferior, grinding him to powder like a broken bottle beneath my feet while dismissing the fact that I was no white knight in shining armor myself. My dignity was compromised because I refused to compromise, because I was so concerned with maintaining it that I forgot what it meant to be dignified--living by your principles, remembering that actions speak amplitudes louder than words.
In a city like New Haven, we face the dichotomies of capital at every turn. Outside the majestic, stony buildings of Yale, the homeless lie shivering in the shadows. In the midst of the university's wealth, Annette, a homeless woman, sells dyed flowers to ward off the cold. A young man, no, a boy, walks past the ragged people cowering before storefront windows and drops, not a coin, but an insult, a worthless scrap of paper, at their feet. And I do not pick it up.
Living in a capitalist consumer society, it is easy for us to forget that cash is not our only currency. We do not have only our purses to promote the well-being of our market; we have our values to live by as well. We possess the imperative to perform what our morals, as well as our pocketbooks, afford us. Those who are morally upright must stand all the straighter, and should not fear that bending in service of society will compromise their stature, for indeed it will enhance it. Spare good is not like spare change. It does not linger forgotten in a pocket, waiting to be discovered; it rises forth, demanding recognition and action.
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