A silent witness to human suffering

Marcus sat in his usual spot at the café, MacBook carefully angled so other patrons could see he was working on what appeared to be a manuscript. The document’s header read "Observations on the Human Condition: A Chronicle of Witnessed Suffering." He’d been revising the same paragraph for an hour, mostly to maintain the appearance of deep contemplation.

A barista dropped a cup, and Marcus allowed himself a small, knowing smile. Another metaphor for the fragility of human existence, he thought, already composing the blog post in his head.

When people asked what he did for a living, Marcus would pause deliberately before answering, "I bear witness." The pause was important – he’d practiced it extensively. If pressed further, he’d explain that he was "a silent witness to human suffering," a phrase he’d first encountered in an undergraduate philosophy seminar and had since claimed as his own.

The truth was that Marcus worked remotely as a mid-level data analyst for a healthcare insurance company, processing claim denials. He preferred not to think about this irony.

Today, he was watching an elderly woman struggle with the café’s door. He made no move to help – that would compromise his role as an observer, he told himself. Instead, he opened a new document and began typing: "The aged hands trembled against unyielding glass, a metaphor for humanity’s futile struggle against the barriers of mortality…​"

"Hey, could you hold the door?" A young woman’s voice interrupted his typing. She was helping the elderly woman, shooting Marcus a look that suggested she’d noticed his deliberate inaction. He pretended not to notice, instead writing: "The youth’s intervention serves only to temporarily delay the inevitable…​"

That evening, Marcus would post his daily observation on his blog, "Witnessing the Void." It had seventeen followers, three of which weren’t spam bots. He considered this a testament to how few people were truly ready to confront the depths of human existence.

At home, he maintained a wall of photographs he called his "Archive of Suffering" – mostly black and white shots of people looking vaguely unhappy on public transport or sitting alone in restaurants. He’d recently added an artfully blurred photo of someone dropping their ice cream cone.

His mother had once asked him, during one of their increasingly rare phone calls, if he ever considered actually helping any of the people he observed. Marcus had sighed deeply – he’d been practicing different sighs too – and explained that intervention would "corrupt the purity of the observation."

"Honey," she’d replied, "has it occurred to you that maybe you’re just scared?"

Marcus had hung up and immediately written a three-thousand-word blog post about how parents could never truly understand their children’s spiritual journeys.

As the café began to close, Marcus packed up his laptop with deliberate slowness, savoring what he imagined to be the weight of all he’d witnessed. Tomorrow he would return to his chosen post, ready to document more evidence of life’s inherent tragedy. But first, he had to finish processing a backlog of insurance claims that had been sitting in his work queue all day.

On his way out, he nearly tripped over an uneven paving stone. A teenager reached out to steady him, but Marcus quickly stepped away. He couldn’t risk becoming part of someone else’s observation of human kindness. That wasn’t his role. He was, after all, just a witness.