I want to write about an incident today that touched me deeply. As with all deep subjects that beg for introspection, the layers of thought begin to meld into one another, and the original point can sink into chaos.
I’ve been called out as being immoral. Is that the label given when one person declares themselves moral and another does not comply? I’m never quite sure.
To be honest, I believe the morally bankrupt are those who can’t—or won’t—question themselves. Ever. They’ve taken the high road. They are morally superior. There is no need for doubt or introspection. They do not exist in the gray zone. They are certain.
It all began about a month ago when the police department called me.
“Hello?”
“This is Officer with the City of Longmont Police. Is this so-and-so at such-and-such address?”
“Why are you calling me? What’s wrong?”
They were conducting a wellness check on my neighbor. Apparently, a merchant had reported him for purchasing too many gift cards at the request of telephone scammers—$6,000 worth, to be exact.
My neighbor always sends the police away when they come to assess the situation. The file is then closed with the note: “no issues.” The police have been there twice in the recent past.
In speaking with my neighbor, there was empirical evidence that every month his Social Security check is siphoned out of his account—the very next day, like clockwork. Tens of thousands of dollars from his reverse mortgage have also been siphoned off.
He has a small amount left—an amount that a repeat caller promises will turn into a new vehicle and $50,000, but only if he signs some documents first.
Several other alarming red flags emerged, and now we were in the lobby waiting our turn with a senior services specialist. My neighbor knew exactly why we were there. We had multiple conversations about the meeting, the time, and what documentation to bring.
I could not unravel this quagmire by myself and needed another witness to the financial exploitation of a senior citizen.
When our turn came, we rose from our seats. My neighbor turned to me and said, “Tell me again—why are we here?”
It was a long meeting—over an hour and a half—to complete what should have been a fifteen-minute phone procedure. The goal was to determine what transactions had occurred on his account—the same account where his monthly Social Security benefits were deposited—the same account that showed a balance of fifty-eight cents after $900 had been deposited just a week earlier.
Eventually, we were on speakerphone with the bank’s fraud department—the three of us: the senior services representative, my neighbor, and me. We were advised that only the victim was allowed to speak. We could not coach him, speak for him, or say anything at all. If we spoke, the phone call would end. We had to remain silent while this poor man was left on his own to say the precise things necessary to reach a solution—a solution he didn’t understand.
At the height of it, I felt the emotion rise from my solar plexus, up through my chest and into my throat. The overwhelm of his vulnerability and confusion, the audacity of it all, the sheer magnitude of the assault. Tears sprang into my eyes before I could set my jaw. I took a breath to regain my composure.
I learned today that the appropriate name for my emotional state is secondary trauma or moral distress. This occurs when you see what’s happening, you know what would help, but the victim cannot—or will not—accept the protection. To add insult to injury, the system moves more slowly than the harm.
This combination emotionally breaks people. Even professionals burn out from exactly this. As I process it, I assume it’s like working with addiction. Safety and solutions are just a decision away—but the decision never comes.
It was midday, and already the man had received over thirty phone calls from scammers and telemarketers. As I dropped him off at home, he announced that he planned to call all of them back.
Sigh…
I’m still trying to process my boundaries, my civic obligations. He reminds me so much of my deceased brother. Same age. Same stage of disrepair. Same dangerous impulse to respond to those intending him harm. I couldn’t save Len, and here I am again, having to realize that I can’t save this man either. What a hard lesson in boundaries.
Throughout this process, I’ve been contemplating compassion. What is compassion? How is it measured?
If the news were accurate, fifty percent of the country is enraged in the name of compassion. Rage-filled protests with no clear goal other than stopping a perceived enemy—done out of compassion for people they’ve never met, whose backgrounds and circumstances they don’t know beyond what is curated and presented in incendiary headlines.
Does that rage qualify as compassion? Can we be compassionate without understanding?
I’m perplexed when I see people protesting an administration they know very little about—because they’re reading headlines rather than engaging with the issues. These same people are out protesting—angry, vile—and further believe I’m morally bankrupt (seriously) because I don’t carry their same level of indignation. Yet I don’t see them getting out of their chairs to help an exploited neighbor. What I do see is virtue signaling—calling me out for having a different opinion.
This is not a political argument. It’s giving voice to a moral injury.
Today, I stood face-to-face with real suffering: confusion, exploitation, fear, and vulnerability. I showed up. I took emotional risk. I absorbed pain that wasn’t mine because someone needed help.
If this is what moral bankruptcy looks like, then I can live with the charge.
Then I witnessed people pouring enormous energy into symbolic outrage—loud, performative, certain of their moral superiority—while doing nothing when compassion requires inconvenience, patience, or emotional cost.
That’s when I understood there are two kinds of compassion:
Expressed compassion—comprised of opinions, protests, posts, and public moral positioning.
Embodied compassion—which involves sitting in confusion with someone, holding paperwork so a man doesn’t lose his last dollars, making uncomfortable calls, crying in a waiting room because it’s too much to witness.
Moral certainty without proximity to suffering is cheap. Moral clarity forged in the physical presence of suffering is rare.
People who externalize morality need villains. People who internalize morality need boundaries. And they need to learn that it’s lonely—and that’s okay.
To be clear, anger itself is not the opposite of compassion. There is such a thing as clean anger. It’s protective, boundary-setting, and brief. It is not projected. It is not identity-based.
Anger becomes projection when it turns chronic—when it needs an enemy, when it becomes an identity, when grief is replaced instead of processed.
Unprocessed grief often becomes moralized anger.
People who are loud and angry often believe they are being compassionate—because anger feels like care. But compassion that has not made room for grief will almost always seek a target.
That was not the goal—or the process—of today.
