I'm not writing to make anyone or anything wrong, or to discuss the current state of health care. I'm writing to share the experience of being with Tim yesterday, and the impact and implications for John and me... and for all of us.

It wasn't just the hospital staff that broke our hearts. It was both the disregard and looks of passerby on the street as we were with Tim. It was in the gasps and wild eyes of people seeing my arm around him. It was the man who begrudgingly gave us the luggage dolly without even glancing at Tim, and his calling after us wheeling a sick, shaking man to the hospital "just make sure to get the dolly back!"

There is so much pain in the world. To stop and consider it all would invite such a heartbreak that we wouldn't be able to go about our daily lives. So piece by piece, little by little, we turn down the volume on and vision of its evidence so that we can go about our normal routines.

But how 'normal' is a routine that literally walks by a man collapsing onto a sidewalk, or another man sleeping on one? How 'normal' is justifying and rationalizing that 'that's just the way it is' when we see our fellow man in need and won't even acknowledge his existence?

Our minds, by design, present reasons and excuses why things are ok the way they are. Cognitive dissonance requires us to make a choice: to see the world as generally fine so that we can be fine within it, or to acknowledge that it is not and necessarily be propelled into action. We so often choose the former so as not to have to deal with the latter.

John and I took our experience as an opportunity to look into our hearts and at our lives and ask ourselves whether the commitments we currently have are working... for us, for our families, for our communities, for our world. And the answer we came up with is no. Things are not fine when we ignore other human beings in large and little ways.  And we got present to how often we do it.

It is just not OK. And we're making some changes.