The city never seemed to sleep. Cars rolled endlessly beneath glowing streetlights, phones lit faces in the darkness, and people hurried along sidewalks carrying coffee cups, backpacks, worries, and dreams. Every person appeared to be moving toward something—success, love, security, happiness—or running away from something unseen.
On a cool evening in early autumn, Daniel left his office long after sunset. His shoulders ached from staring at spreadsheets all day, and his mind felt heavy from deadlines and endless notifications. Like many evenings, he walked home wearing headphones, looking downward, barely noticing the world around him.
But that night his phone battery had died.
For the first time in hours, there was silence.
As he walked through downtown, he began noticing things he usually ignored.
Near the entrance of a subway station sat an elderly man wrapped in a faded blanket. Beside him rested a small cardboard sign: Lost my home. Anything helps.
Further down the block, a young woman sat alone on a bus bench, her face buried in her hands. Though Daniel did not know her story, her shoulders shook with quiet sobs.
Near a hospital entrance, a tired father paced back and forth while staring anxiously at his phone.
Across the street, two people shouted angrily at one another before storming off in opposite directions.
Daniel slowed his pace.
Normally he would have looked away.
Normally he would have thought:
“Sad… unfortunate…”
And then continued walking.
But for some reason he could not.
Earlier that week he had attended a meditation class at a local Buddhist center. An elderly teacher had spoken words that Daniel had not fully understood then:
“From an inconceivable beginning comes wandering. Beings, hindered by ignorance and bound by craving, travel from life to life. When you see someone overwhelmed by suffering, remember: countless times, through that long journey, you too have known such pain.”
At the time Daniel thought the teaching sounded poetic, mysterious, perhaps too distant from ordinary life.
Now, standing beneath city lights, he remembered it.
He looked again at the old man beneath the blanket.
And a strange thought arose:
“If I have wandered through countless lives… who is to say I was never once like him?”
Not as philosophy.
Not as an abstract religious idea.
But truly.
Perhaps in some forgotten age he had known hunger.
Perhaps he had searched for shelter.
Perhaps he had lost everything.
He looked toward the woman crying on the bench.
“I too have lost things.”
Not exactly her story.
Not exactly her pain.
But loss itself.
Heartbreak.
Fear.
Loneliness.
Disappointment.
He remembered nights after his divorce when his apartment felt impossibly empty. He remembered grief after his mother’s death. He remembered failures he rarely spoke about.
Suddenly the people around him no longer seemed like strangers.
They looked like mirrors.
Different faces.
Different circumstances.
But the same human sorrow.
The same longing.
The same wish:
“May things not hurt.”
He kept walking.
At a busy intersection he saw ambulances racing toward the hospital.
He saw exhausted workers returning home.
He saw teenagers laughing loudly.
He saw an elderly couple slowly helping one another across the street.
Birth.
Aging.
Separation.
Fear.
Hope.
Gain.
Loss.
Again and again.
The city itself suddenly seemed like a great river of beings endlessly flowing onward.
And Daniel wondered:
“How long have we all been traveling?”
The Buddha had called it an inconceivable beginning.
No first day.
No starting point.
No moment one could say:
“Here suffering began.”
Beings wandered on and on, carried by craving:
“I want this.”
“I don’t want that.”
“May I become.”
“May I never lose.”
Pulled by ignorance, they chased shadows believing they would finally bring lasting happiness.
Again and again.
Life after life.
Dream after dream.
Loss after loss.
Daniel stood still while crowds moved around him.
For the first time he felt the weight of those words:
“Long have you experienced pain. Long have you experienced loss. Long have you swelled the cemeteries.”
Not merely through one life.
But through an immeasurable journey.
He imagined oceans of tears shed over separations, griefs, fears, and deaths beyond counting.
And suddenly a deep weariness entered his heart.
Not despair.
Something gentler.
Something quieter.
Like awakening from a very long dream.
He thought:
“How long must this continue?”
Not only for himself.
For everyone.
For the old man.
For the woman on the bench.
For the father at the hospital.
For all beings rushing beneath the lights.
For countless lives they had wandered.
And countless times they had fallen.
Then another realization appeared:
If all beings had suffered this way—
then anger made little sense.
Pride made little sense.
Hatred made little sense.
How could one hate another traveler lost in the same storm?
Compassion arose naturally.
Not because he forced it.
Not because he thought he should be kind.
But because he finally saw:
“We have all been overwhelmed by hard times.”
“We have all wandered.”
“We have all suffered.”
Daniel reached into his wallet and returned to the elderly man.
He offered food and sat beside him for a few moments.
Not as someone helping a stranger.
But as one traveler meeting another.
Above them the city lights flickered like stars.
Cars moved.
People hurried.
The world continued rushing onward.
Yet for a brief moment Daniel saw things differently.
And somewhere within his heart there arose the beginning of disenchantment—not bitterness toward life, but weariness toward endless grasping.
The beginning of dispassion.
The beginning of letting go.
The beginning of freedom.
For when one truly sees the endless wandering, one no longer wishes to keep chasing every mirage.
One begins instead to seek the path that leads beyond wandering itself.
And perhaps that is where liberation first begins:
not in looking away from suffering—
but in finally recognizing it everywhere,
and understanding:
“I, too, have walked this road for a very, very long time.”
Link: https://wisdomtea.org/2026/05/14/the-faces-along-the-sidewalk/
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