Perhaps it is because we try to hold fast to our personal beliefs or perhaps it is because we ourselves fear becoming involved with something that we know nothing about, whatever the reasons, it seems that tolerance for someone who is very different from ourselves is often very hard to come by. It can occur because someone speaks a different language or is a different color from us, or it can be because they live a different lifestyle from our own.

Sometimes educating ourselves on these differences allows us to be more tolerant toward them, and sometimes not. Sometimes it is compassion and sometimes just that we have no means of escape from these differences that causes us to accept them. Tolerance doesn't always appear in colors of black and white, it often arrives in many forms and shades of gray, we as human beings learn to accept within each of us our own levels of tolerance in different situations.

My friend Pete: He's at my door again, little dog in his arms, tears in his eyes. "I need a friend", he says. I sigh and then I let him come in. I've known him since we were kids. He was always a hard luck story. He was raised in foster care; I met him when he ran away from there, and back to his alcoholic mom who was our neighbor. I think I was around ten then. "I have no where else to go", he says.

I ask him what happened to his apartment, he shrugs like he doesn't know what happened, and I know his rent has gone to buy alcohol. His landlord probably wouldn't take any more excuses. So here he is. He starts to curse and I tell him that he has to lower his voice so he doesn't disturb anyone else in the building. Then I explain, like I have explained a hundred times before, that I can't have a dog here. He can spend the night but he has to leave the next day. I get the dog a bowl of water and set it on the floor in front of him.

He's talking about when we were kids and how my dad was like an adoptive dad to him. How my parents helped take care of him, how us kids were like his family, his sisters and brothers.

I'm thinking of when I had seen him 15 years earlier. He was strong then. He was married to a beautiful blond. He owned a skidder that he worked in the summer, in the winter he had a grader route, and he plowed the rural neighborhood that he lived in for his winter livelihood. He also owned a gym, and he worked or played there when his other jobs allowed him to. He had been cocky and assertive, but always a little shy, maybe because of the insecure little kid that still lived in him.

Thinking of the past has him crying heavier and his voice gets louder again. I remind him that he will have to leave if he can't keep his voice down. "Damn train", he says.

Now we both think back to that fateful day years ago. He was strong then. The work crew driving out from the bush that day was hit by a train. It hit on his side as he was reaching down for his thermos of coffee. His hands touching that thermos is the only memory that he has of that day.

That train is how he became what he is today.

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