Middlepath – I certainly would not condone anyone talking or whispering about you in public but I want you to know it may not be bad. Sometimes I’ll see someone who has suffered as you have and I find myself thinking about how much pain they have endured, how well they seem to be doing or how sorry I am.
I saw a boy walk past my house, he was way off any derech and very into drugs. I was watching him cuz I was thinking about how he looked exactly like his father and how his father also wandered in that direction at that age. I thought about how his father cleaned up his act and made a nice life for himself and wished the same for this boy. Appearantly getting caught up in nostalgia and warm wishes on the inside, looked very much like ‘staring’ on the outside because he made some nasty comment to me indicating he just thought I was some frum old lady giving him the evil eye. I felt awful that he thought that, and am much more careful now to assume sensitivity, and to smile. But I never woulda thought. . .