Some Days the Truth Is Heavier

This happened this morning. A man was asleep on a subway car near Times Square, trying to stay warm, and someone set him on fire. Fifty-five years old, unhoused, alone on a moving train. That is the whole story, although the city will find creative ways to make it sound smaller.

I have lived long enough to know that cruelty doesn’t appear out of thin air. It grows in the places we stop tending. A system frays, a policy collapses, a budget gets trimmed, and eventually the bill comes due. It always lands on the people who never had much to begin with.

We treat these attacks like unfortunate weather. “Terrible,” we say, as if a shrug counts as civic participation. Meanwhile the conditions that create them stay exactly where we left them. Mental-health care is a rumor. Housing is a luxury. The trains serve as shelter until they don’t.

Twain used to say that history never repeats, it just stutters in the same accent. This city is starting to stutter. Loudly.

Dignity should not depend on luck or daylight. Yet here we are, watching the most vulnerable carry the consequences of everyone else’s indifference.

Some days the truth feels heavier than others. Today is one of those days.