The Left Lane of Empathy

As our business started growing, Seattle became a second home.
Video shoots. Developer pitches. Quick turnarounds. We even helped one of the biggest firms there win an architectural achievement award—with a full project that had to be completed in just seven days. That story’s for another time.

But if you’ve ever driven through Seattle, you know this:
Timing is everything.

Traffic in the city is a beast. So I’d schedule my shoots to wrap by 2:30, maybe 3:00 p.m. tops. That gave me a shot at the sixty-mile journey back north before the freeway became a parking lot.

I had it down to a science—zigzagged my way through the city onto a five-lane one-way street. The right lane was my escape hatch. Eventually, it curved under and onto I-5, and I was gone.

But at the final light before the ramp, I noticed him.

Same man. Same corner. Dozens of times.

Maybe mid-forties, clothes worn down by time, holding a cardboard sign with the quiet dignity of someone who had learned not to expect too much.

One day, I drifted across traffic to the far-left lane, and, as luck would have it, hit the light red right at the crosswalk.

I rolled my window down and said,
“How’s business today, sir?”

He looked up, surprised. Smiled.
“Not too bad here most days.”

I reached into my wallet and handed him a $20 bill.
“Whatever your situation was that got you here, maybe this’ll help.”

He beamed.
“Bless you, sir. Thank you so much!”

The light turned green. I nodded, gunned it, and threaded my way back across four lanes to make my onramp.

It became a routine.
When the timing was right—if I wasn’t more than three cars back—I’d shift lanes just to see him. And over months, maybe more than a year, I gave what I could. Probably two or three hundred dollars in total.

After a while, I could tell he recognized my car.
Some days I hit the light red. Others not. On those days, all I could do was wave and drive on.

Still, the connection never faded.
A moment. A rhythm. A quiet understanding.

But like everything in life, empathy isn’t always easy.

Later, while working a county contract back north, I heard one of the commissioners say:
“If we keep handing money to the homeless, they’ll just keep sticking around.”

At first, that sort of mentality felt callous.

Then, one day, I saw something that shook me:

A group I hadn’t put together in my mind were all loading into a van. One of them—the man I had just seen in a wheelchair at the local strip mall exit—stood up, folded the chair, and casually threw it into the back.

I drove home that day with a knot in my stomach.
Was it a scam? Had I really been that naïve?

Maybe.
Maybe not.

In the end, I decided this:

You don’t give because they’ve earned it.
You give because you can.

I realized I wasn’t just investing in his dignity.
I was protecting mine.

So I stopped trying to do the moral math.
I just did what was in my heart—and let the rest go.

Empathy isn’t a science.
It’s not clean.
It rarely makes sense on paper.

But it keeps us human.

And sometimes… that’s all the reason you need.

~Elise
Empathy in the Wild