"I did not excel at life today." and the scared young man...

   A Facebook friend posted that yesterday. "I did not excel at life today."  Now... what an amazing statement, an honest statement, a conscious statement. One often hears that it is important to embrace the truth of our individual lives. This matter-of-fact statement said it all for me. 
  
   Yesterday in my rounds of things to do, I stopped to fill up the car with gasoline. As i pulled into the spot, I saw that right there on the adjacent street a local policeman had pulled over a young man. I could hear the officer. I could see the young man gripping the steering wheel with both hands, looking straight forward. The policeman said something like, "You don't have any drugs in your car, do you?" That was all I heard clearly. I will tell you now that this young man was black bodied, and I wondered if that is why he was like a statue in his car. Was he gripped with fear ?
   I went on to the new local 'super store' where i was looking to fill my to get list. Toward the end of my shopping i was in a freezer section and the same young man was there. Honestly, I would not have recognized him if he had not been black. He was talking to himself.  He was a bit agitated. And i realized that this young man , like my son, is schizophrenic.  His encounter with the cop pushed him over the edge a bit, I suspect. I wanted so much to reach out to him, to help him calm down, but knowing what it is like to try that with my own son, I was actually afraid to intrude into his internal process. I wanted to just give him a mom hug... to tell him everything would be ok.. to take him home and make him lunch... but fact is, I would be afraid to do that for my own son, to be alone with him  if he were in such an agitated state after encountering an authority figure.  I thought of his mother, and wondered if she, like me, struggled with the pain of having a child with such severe mental illness.  And.. is it harder to be a black schizophrenic person than a white one?  Or... is there no difference in public perception ?  My heart was hurting for this young man for several hours. I prayed and prayed that he is being watched over in a special way... as I do for my son..
   A hug does not take away mental illness.