Unassigned
I’m a nice person.
I’m sweet to waiters, I am patient at airports, I always let cars in when they realize they’re in the wrong lane and there’s tons of traffic.
I rescued a stray kitten once.
Ya know, nice stuff that nice people do to be nice.
I mean, I’m no Ryan Seacrest (what? you don’t like my standard for nice?), but I like to think I treat people well.
That was, until I met Julio Diaz. And by meet, I mean I heard him on NPR.
His story blew all of my niceness out of the water. How he looks at humanity puts how I look at humanity in a half nelson and embarrasses it in front of all its friends.
In short, Julio – a 31-year-old social worker from the Bronx – got mugged at knifepoint by a teenager on his way home from work one day. What he did next is not noteworthy; he handed over his wallet and said, “Here ya go.”
But what he did after that kind of made me want to weep.
As the teenager was walking away, Diaz offered him his coat.
Let’s get this straight for a second. He took the coat off of his own back and offered it to the man who had just threatened him with a knife and taken all of his money.
Seriously.
The story goes on to say that the mugger stopped in his tracks and asked him why he was doing that. Julio responded by saying that if he was going to be out all night robbing people, he might as well stay warm. He continued with, “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money.” He said in the interview that he recognized that this young man might just really need help.
He then said that he was on his way to get dinner and that the man was more than welcome to come with.
So that’s exactly what they did. Julio and his mugger – who was still holding his wallet – had a meal together. At the end of their meal, Julio told the teenager that he’d have to pay for the bill because he had all of his money, but that if he wanted to give it back, Julio would treat him to dinner.
The mugger wordlessly handed the wallet back to Diaz.
In the end, Julio gave the kid $20 as he was leaving and asked, in exchange, for his knife.
When prompted, Julio simply says, “I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”
I don’t know how you can read a story like that and not be changed. It’s one of those perspective-changers that makes you really think about what it looks like to extend grace, to show mercy; to really love others.
It’s like the golden rule on steroids.
At risk of sounding like my grandmother, what he did was radical. But at the same time, it is completely accessible. To me and to you.
When I thought about it, I realized I have the time, energy and even money to show radical grace to people every day. Time, because I am not nearly as important as I think I am, energy because I exert myself towards countless lesser aims, and money because compared to the rest of the world, I am rich.
So while I know my reaction to being mugged wouldn’t have looked like that before reading this story (I would have screamed like an 11-year-old and wet myself), maybe, just maybe I will look at life differently now.
Because there’s a great chance that Julio is on to something; there’s a great chance that loving people radically is exactly why we’re here.
