Note: The names in this post have been changed to maintain the anonymity of the people involved.

Recently, I had the good fortune of experiencing Dia de Muertos in Oaxaca City, one of the most sought-after places in Mexico to experience the holiday festivities. A new friend and I had made the decision to head there a few days before the celebrations began, and we were fortunate enough to find accommodations in the city with short notice in spite of nearly everything online being booked out. I was stoked to have an opportunity to visit the city and experience the culture surrounding Dia de Muertos, and that excitement was amplified by the fact that until three days before my flight there, I’d been fairly static in Playa del Carmen for three weeks as I fulfilled a housesitting commitment I’d made to some friends there. I was craving movement and exploration, and Oaxaca was a welcome change to the routine of being in one place for all that time. Upon arriving at the airport, I was brimming with energy and could not wait to check out the city. A quick shuttle ride later, I put my bags down at the hostel I’d be staying at for the next eight days and began canvassing the streets, immediately noticing an abundance of art studios, cafes, and street food. The city was vibrant and busy, and I was eager to get a lay of the land before my friend’s arrival a few days later.

After a long week of trying as much Oaxaqueño food as I could, partying every night without a care in the world, and neglecting my daily habits, I was feeling a bit off balance and found myself spending a lot of time in my thoughts. I was feeling uncomfortably uncertain about the future direction of my travels, and wished that I could reconnect with even a small dose of the ecstatic feelings I had felt for a large duration of the first two months of my trip. Some worries about social dynamics with some of the new acquaintances I’d been spending time with had been on my mind a lot during my time in Oaxaca, and the feeling that the people I was spending time with were not really “my people” was tough to ignore. I began wrestling with some creeping self-doubt that had not surfaced in quite some time until the stretch of increased alcohol consumption and shitty sleep.  I hate feeling depleted of energy and I was unhappy to be faced with those insecurities and worries, so I made the decision to go dry for a bit in an attempt to regain some internal balance. 

 In spite of not wanting to drink mezcal or go out for late night festivities, I did want to enjoy my last night in Oaxaca City with a bit of exploration on foot, and I wanted to spend some more time with two amazing friends of mine from San Diego who, by pleasant surprise, turned out to have a trip planned here at the same time that I did. I had been on the hunt for a sweet treat of some kind, but they were ready to get together before I found anything that really appealed to my sweet tooth, so I joined my friends Samantha and Anna at their hotel for a few minutes before the three of us went back out into the streets to continue the search. We made a beeline for Cafe Boulenc, a French bakery with all sorts of delicious pastries that conveniently is located a short walk from their hotel, and I found what I was looking for. I purchased a brownie and a slice of some kind of Russian cake, and we started to roam around to find a place to sit where we could eat, chat, and soak up some of the energy of the city. 

Samantha chose a direction, and we walked about a block up from Cafe Boulenc before turning right to make our way a bit deeper into the city center. As we cruised down the street, pep in our steps and pastries in hand, we came upon a man who was slowly ambling down the street on his own in the same direction that we were moving. He wore long pants, an unzipped hooded sweatshirt, and a black backpack, and in his right hand carried a plastic grocery bag full of miscellaneous items. The legs of his pants were rolled up, and as we approached to pass around him on our walk, we noticed that his lower legs were covered in open wounds of some kind- at a glance I thought that they were sores, maybe from an untreated infection of some kind, which was an easy assumption based on my other assumptions of him being a transient street-dwelling person. Each sore had dried streaks of blood and other fluids dried around it. There was a substantial amount of gauze wrapped around one of his ankles. He was speaking as we approached, and I thought that he was asking us for money but I couldn’t tell for sure- my Spanish comprehension is limited, and on top of that he was nearly hysterical as he spoke, his rapidly spoken words coming from what sounded like a place of despair. Wanting no part in whatever he had going on, we bypassed him quickly. 

As we continued on, Samantha, Anna and I shared a few worried looks between one another and discussed the state of the person we’d just passed. Those open wounds, the crying, the rambling speech- he clearly was not okay. We glanced back a few times to look again, and during this time the man stopped walking and sat down on the sidewalk near the spot where we had originally passed him. We stopped and briefly discussed whether or not we should go and talk to him; usually in these types of situations it’s easiest to keep on walking and forget about it, but something about this situation felt a bit different, and my gut told me that if I continued on without at least asking if he was okay, it would be a regret. I asked Samantha to hold the bags of my pastries and I doubled back.

I quickly reached the spot where he was sitting and crouched down to talk with him, attempting to figure out with my limited Spanish what was going on. I asked him if he was okay, but the question was rhetorical: it was obvious that he was very, very far from okay. He was holding his head and sobbing, and as he spoke to me his tone was high-pitched and his speech frantic as a result of the state of distress he was in. I desperately wished to understand what he was saying, as did Anna, who at first stood by my shoulder for a few minutes to try to help but couldn’t quite understand either. I put a hand on his shoulder and tried to calmly speak with him, and began gathering information about his situation as he spoke to me. 

His name was Mateo. He told me that family lives in Tijuana, and he needed to get back there but had no money for a bus ticket, which would cost him one thousand pesos (about $50 USD). He could not speak without crying. Wanting to know about his wounds, I asked him what was happening with his legs, asking if it was an infection of some kind; at first I thought that he said yes, but shortly afterwards, he told me that it was not an infection, but knife wounds. “Gente muy mala lo hizo,” he said between sobs, “con un cuchillo.” Bad people, he said, did this to him with a knife. From what I could see, there were at least fifteen puncture wounds between both of his legs. I asked him if he could go to the hospital, and he said no. Not only would a medical visit cost a minimum of eight hundred pesos, money that he did not have, but he also did not want to risk being reported to the authorities by the hospital- he and his family are immigrants from Guatemala residing in Mexico illegally, and being reported would certainly lead to the possibility of deportation for him and potentially his family. 

Throughout our conversation, I kept my hand on his shoulder, hoping that the gesture would help him feel a little bit less alone. To the best of my ability, I said a few things to him: I told him that his situation would get better; I told him that he was a good person, and I told him to be careful of the people he was around; finally, in what I felt was more important than anything else I could say, I repeatedly told him that I was with him, and in that moment that he was not alone. He didn’t seem mentally ill, nor do I think he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol; to me, he simply felt desperate and alone, just a fellow human being who was at an absolute rock bottom, alone in a foreign state with zero resources, in between a rock and a hard place, in dire need of support, wanting nothing but to be back with his family. 

I wanted to help Mateo, but I didn’t know what to do. Thinking that it would be better than nothing, I asked him if I could give him some money, and he reluctantly agreed; when I pulled 400 pesos out of my wallet, a whopping twenty dollars, It felt pitifully worthless in the face of what he was dealing with. Not even enough to buy his bus ticket. Suddenly, I remembered that I had some dollars folded up behind one of my credit cards. I counted the bills, and it totaled to $100. I had been holding onto this money as “just in case” cash, but at that moment there was no doubt that it all needed to go to him. Coupled with the pesos I’d pulled out, this amount felt more substantial, and would be enough for him to get both his bus ticket and a visit to the hospital if he chose to go. I told him how much I had for him, but that I wanted him to use it to get himself a bus ticket and the medical attention that he so desperately needed. I asked if he had a cell phone to talk to his family, and he did not; when I offered him the use of mine to call his family, he declined, saying that they would worry too much if he talked to them at that moment. Wanting to respect that, I did not advise him to do so, in spite of thinking that if anyone ever needed the reassuring comfort of hearing their mother’s voice, it was Mateo.

We had been talking for what felt like a long time at that point; in reality, it had probably been about fifteen minutes. He had calmed down a bit, and after I gave him the money and sort of figured that that was the extent of the help I was able to provide and he was able to receive from me, it seemed there was not much more to discuss or do and I felt that we would part ways soon. I told him to breathe with me, and he did; as we took three deep, slow breaths together, I exaggerated my exhales in an attempt to guide him to do the same and find some calm in the storm. I asked him if there was anything else I could do for him, and he said no- it seemed to me that he had found some strength in himself throughout the conversation and the breathing, and his proclamation that he was going to get himself to the bus station and get his ticket made me feel that there was a confidence that he could do it. With a few final words, I wished him luck, stood up, and walked a few feet back down the street to my friends.

When I reached Samantha and Anna, I really didn’t know what to say or do, and I very quickly felt a huge rush of emotion coming on all at once, and not wanting to cry right then and there, walked across the street to a bathroom in a parking garage just to find a quiet place to compose myself. As I made my way towards the bathroom, I looked back up the street and saw Mateo trudging in the opposite direction towards the main intersection with his bags in hand, and felt a sense of responsibility for this man getting to where he needed to go while simultaneously realizing that I could do nothing more.

In the bathroom, I took a few moments to breathe and try to acknowledge what I had just observed. I went back to my friends, and after deciding to continue on as we were before, we walked a few more steps before spotting a bench on a busy street around the corner and sitting down to try to enjoy the pastries I had recently bought. As we sat, we talked a little bit about what had just happened, but the mood was understandably heavy and after a certain point there just was not much more to say. I started feeling like I needed to be alone, so we said our goodbyes, shared a few hugs, and went our separate ways.

On the walk back to my hostel, I wanted to find some food, but I was unsure if I was actually hungry or just looking to distract myself from the tornado of emotions I could feel swirling around in my gut and the thoughts crowding my head. I bought a jumbo cup of esquite a few blocks away from the hostel, and slowly ate it as I walked. The sadness I felt for Mateo was not an isolated emotion; as I saw people drinking and dancing and listening to music in the bars I passed on the way home, I also felt angry, even disgusted, at the idea of all of this fucking fun being had, all while this poor guy was walking aimlessly through the city. He was wounded, crying, desperate, without options, and completely alone; the feelings of aloneness and invisibility that he must have felt in those moments could only have been intensified by finely dressed drunk people ignoring him and walking past on their way to the next drink. Over the course of a few short minutes, everything I had been doing in Oaxaca City, everything I had been worried about and annoyed by that week, and all of the problems I’ve ever faced in my life suddenly felt petty, insignificant, and absolutely trivial. I felt shameful for the partying I had been doing, and for having lived in such a cushy bubble of sheltered luxury for my entire life. 

Ignorance really is bliss. I have never experienced anything like this; the first few days after I met Mateo brought a variety of unfamiliar feelings and a heaviness that I had never felt before. Now that a few weeks have passed, the rawness of those emotions has largely subsided, but some change has been catalyzed. The conversations I’ve had about it with friends and family have been helpful in processing and reflecting, and above anything else, I now feel deeply grateful for the encounter because it has provided me with a valuable shift in perspective. Quite suddenly, so many of the challenges I’ve faced and the problems I have seem inconsequential and pose as reminders of my privilege. Suffering comes in many shapes and sizes, and living in a first world country doesn’t prevent one from experiencing hardship; however, I urge anyone reading this: take a look at your own stresses and your recent worries and ask yourself if these are really worth losing sleep over.

Throughout most of my life, I’ve prioritized myself and my own problems, and ignoring the suffering that exists in so much of the world has been easy because of the perception of separation from it. We see graphic images of natural disasters and war; we read about famine, human rights crises, extreme poverty; we see homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk or shooting up heroin in front of an abandoned storefront; so much suffering on display, and yet, after consuming all of this, we simply take a breath, maybe say “Damn, that’s awful,” and move on with our day. We know it’s real, but we do not feel the realness. In the few chances that we have to make an impact with someone who is deeply in pain, we often walk past that person because it is easier than confronting the intense discomfort that comes from knowing it’s real. It’s easiest to believe that there’s nothing much we can do to help, and with that, we move along, choosing to remain insulated. 

As a lifelong participant in this blissful ignorance, I myself was a direct recipient of the anger and disgust that I mentioned feeling immediately after the encounter. Now, however, having come face to face with someone who was suffering deeply and allowed me to tune into his situation for a moment, I’ve seen something I can’t unsee, felt something I can’t unfeel. My eyes have been opened to a side of human existence I’d previously never really seen up close before. It’s too early to tell what impact this will have on my path moving forward, but I know that this was a life-changing encounter for me. I feel a sense of responsibility to extend a hand to others in dire situations, to confront my own ignorance, and to fully acknowledge and face the existence of the unimaginable pain and suffering that exists outside of the comfortably insulated life I have known. By allowing me to share the heaviness of this experience, my parents and the friends who I’ve spoken to about this have alleviated some of the pain I felt from Mateo; applying this concept to a greater scale, I suspect that the act of allowing ourselves to be exposed to suffering and doing whatever we can to help, no matter how insignificant it may seem, has the power to profoundly impact those who are suffering.

I know that by stopping and asking Mateo if he was okay, I did the right thing. I feel lucky that in that moment I was with two compassionate people who had the desire to do the same, and did not discourage me from doing so. I felt some initial hesitation when considering sharing this story with a slightly larger audience, mainly stemming from the concern that this would come across as an attempt to flaunt an act of kindness and put myself up on a moral pedestal. My hope is that nothing I’ve written has come across in this way, and that none of the emotions I describe feeling as a result of this encounter will detract from the gravity of what Mateo was going through- after all, I’m not the one with stab wounds all over my legs, nor do I have to worry about my family being deported if I seek medical attention for an urgent need.

The greater motivation in sharing this is not only the desire to process the events for myself, but to hopefully provide inspiration of some kind, even if this impacts just one single person. The opportunities we have in life to truly help someone seem few and far between, but when those chances present themselves, I want to urge everyone to embrace the discomfort and extend a hand. Be the one who stops, the one who asks, the one who listens, for one small act of kindness may make all of the difference.