The Morning Commute and the Ability to Look Past

The body was on our left. Undeniably dead, sprawled out on side of the road. We were in the car, on the way to work in the morning, listening the BBC’s report on “Michael Jackson’s Monkey” (Seriously? Seriously). A relatively small crowd, orange cones, and two police officers directing traffic marked the scene. It was unclear if the body was struck by a car in the night, or murdered. The irreverence of the moment was what was most striking. A crowd of strangers, an uncovered body, legs exposed, face towards the road, on display for the unending line of traffic passing slowly, methodically by. We drove by only seconds before the monkey-keeper started talking.

Some of it maybe had to do with not wanting to really think, first thing in the morning, about a dead man – young-ish looking – who’s face was turned towards our car, who has a family and friends and didn’t want to die. It was easier to look at him as a body than to think about him as a man. You find that here – it’s often easier to look at terrible or sad or depressing things and acknowledge they are terrible or sad or depressing, but not to really think: children selling deodorant in wheelbarrows during school hours, government employees wasting the day sleeping on their desks, men with scars on their arms and faces from machetes or bullets, amputees, blind singers, grown men with shriveled legs crawling through the market begging. The list goes on. It’s not surprising, but it is shocking, how much you can look past without really, really letting it register.*

* During the same one-hour-ish family car ride, a BBC interviewer asked a man working with gang rape victims in London, “Were you surprised or shocked about [something or other]?” His response: “I wasn’t surprised, but I was shocked,” stimulated discussion about whether or not it was actually possible to be shocked, but not surprised. The verdict: no, but it makes you think for a second, and I like that.