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I had um you know in New York there's there are homeless pretty much everywhere and there are moments in which I'll engage with them and there are moments when I tell myself oh cross the street now and kind of avoid them and I remember one evening I was walking back to the apartment and there was a homeless man who I'd seen before I had never engaged with him and um I thought to myself I'm going to cross the street now but then a little voice said no walk towards him and if he wants to engage with you, stop and engage with him.

So, I did. I went forward. He looked at me. I looked at him and I said, "How how are you doing tonight?" "Oh, it's not been great. You know, it's been kind of a rough a rough day." I said, "Why is that?" And we ended up sitting down and having a conversation. And he and he shared with me a bit of his life story. um you know estrange relationships, drinking problems, not knowing where his wife and kids are today, living on the streets.

And I just did a lot of listening and one of the things that struck me was that as I'm sitting there with this homeless man and there are there are couples well-dressed going out in the evening, you know, passing in front of us, you know, part of my my thinking is like, oh, I wonder what they think of me. But then I kind of just, you know, I snipped that thought and I said, "It doesn't matter what they think of me.

I have this person in front of me who who just needs my attention and this is important, right? He's important." And we just continued our our conversation and I did a lot of listening that night and at the end I needed to go and I said I thanked him for the time together and I said, "Do you need anything from me like a couple dollars?" He said, "No, I need nothing. You gave me exactly what I needed. Right. You needed someone to listen to a story.