One night I was out doing outreach around Redcliffe with Mack. We were making our usual rounds, checking places where people were sleeping rough and handing out meals, water and whatever else I had in the vehicle.

I pulled into a park along the Redcliffe waterfront and stopped to speak with a woman. While we were talking, I noticed a man near a bus stop. He was extremely agitated and punching the structure around him.

I told the woman I was going to check on him.

She warned me not to.

She had good reason. I knew nothing about this man or how he might react to a stranger approaching him. But watching him from across the park, I couldn't bring myself to leave without at least trying.

I grabbed a meal, some water and a dessert and walked over.

"Are you okay?"

"No."

There was something about the way he answered that told me enough.

I got him to sit down and offered him the food. As we began talking, he told me he had just broken up with his partner. He had done things he regretted and made choices he desperately wished he could take back. The anger I had seen from across the park quickly disappeared, and underneath it was a man who was hurting badly.

I knew regret.

There were plenty of things in my own life I wished I could go back and change. I knew what it was like to live with the consequences of your own decisions and to hurt people you cared about. I didn't need to tell him what he had done wrong. He already knew.

So I listened.

For about fifteen minutes he poured his heart out. He ate some of the food and gradually became calmer. I couldn't change what had happened in his relationship or take away the things he regretted, but I could give him those few minutes to talk.

Eventually, I stood up to leave.

That was when he stopped me.

He told me that if I hadn't walked over, he was going to step in front of the next bus that came past.

I froze.

Tears were running down his face as he thanked me.

I looked at the bus stop, then back at him.

I had almost driven away.

There was nothing particularly remarkable about what I had done. I had carried over a meal and asked a man if he was okay. Yet without knowing it, I had walked into one of the darkest moments of his life.

I left that park shaken.

Outreach continued, and over time I met hundreds more people. I never knew what happened to the man from the bus stop. We hadn't exchanged details, and I knew almost nothing about him beyond what he had shared that night.

About a year later, a young woman came into HQ.

I didn't recognise her.

She asked me if I remembered a night on the Redcliffe waterfront when I had approached a distressed man near a bus stop.

Of course I remembered.

Then she told me he was her father.

She had come to thank me.

Her dad had told her what happened that night. She knew what he had been planning before I walked over and what those fifteen minutes had meant.

That was the part that really got me.

Until that moment, I had only ever thought of him as the man from the bus stop. Suddenly I was standing in front of his daughter.

When I approached him that night, I knew nothing about the life surrounding him. I didn't know who would receive a devastating phone call if he stepped onto that road. I didn't know who might spend years wondering whether they could have done something differently.

Now one of those people was standing in front of me.

Her visit gave me something outreach rarely does. It showed me what happened after I left.

I have handed out thousands of meals over the years. I've had conversations with people whose names I never learned and others I may never see again. You don't usually get to know whether those few minutes meant anything once you drive away.

This time I did.

I have thought about that night many times since, but not because I believe I saved someone or did something heroic. What stays with me is how close I came to never knowing.

From across the park, I saw an angry man punching a bus stop.

Fifteen minutes later, I knew why.

A year later, I met his daughter.

Sometimes you have no idea what is happening inside the person standing in front of you.

I'm just grateful that night I asked.

"Are you okay?"