I was walking down the streets of downtown Asheville, N.C., with my mom, grandma, sister and niece. People were flicking between stores like cigarette butts, and some guys were dancing in the park, when he whizzed past. He was shorter than everyone else on the sidewalks and street, his wheelchair was speckled with stickers and he played soul music from a radio balanced on his lap.

Someone mentioned to my grandma that he would make a nice boyfriend for what they perceived as a joke. She responded with something about not wanting to support a man anymore and laughed.

I turned to her and asked, “What makes you think he would want your help?”

I can’t help but wonder what made him seem needier than the other people shuffling by. Why him? The only man for the next half mile who seemed content? He didn’t give a sh*t about the people herding around him. He kept going, letting his head sway to the sax and the pebbles popping under his tires.

With winter on our tongues, people are starting to throw their cash into buckets in front of Walmart and Walgreens to the empty clanking of bells. Sometimes they look at the arm attached to it when they drop in their change. Rarely the face. Never the eyes. Most times they quicken their steps.

Hell, I look down. There’s a special kind of shame attached to being faced with your own selfishness. And almost more shame when you realize that you’re turning into the bucket man. People sidestep around you and try not to look because, shit, you might just have something to say. And they might be drawn in to listen.

It’s easier for people to spot their idea of hopeless in the outfits of strangers than to look in the eyes of the close and feel it. People aren’t ready to be the help that they tell others to ask for. If you are, then that isn’t aimed at you, and I’m sorry that there aren’t more people like you.

I just wonder why people judge the men and women, alone, indenting bar stools beside the crowds more than they judge someone who drifts apart in private. It takes a special kind of strength to let people see you disengage.

I watched a man speak after the Dakota Access Pipeline’s permit was blocked, and he mentioned how his people were still connected to the universe, directly, in a way that we had all left behind. These people that we see, these specks of galaxy that we live with every day and think need us to be happy—maybe they are just closer to pain than us.

And isn’t that OK? To harbor suffering and sometimes let it show? It doesn’t make you less. I think that it makes you greater.

Happiness isn’t forgoing the shame or the sting of situation and circumstance. It’s still going out. It’s asking for help. It’s giving that help when it’s asked for, not when you make a judgement and think it’s necessary.

It’s learning to stay connected to the facets of yourself that you can’t find in places like Rustic Treasures or Thrift Warehouse. The feelings. The loose things connected to the objects of us all.

You might be able to find a used radio or a wheelchair or buy stickers at Hobby Lobby. But you can’t take that confidence home and refurbish it. You can’t put a new coat of paint on someone’s pain and make it pretty.

And that’s OK. It just doesn’t need you yet.