I heard a child yelling

Context
My house is adjacent to a city park, and as such I get to hear a lot of what goes on out there. Today I heard a child yelling in the park, and as often happens, I couldn't tell if he/she was in distress and if so, whether that distress required my attention. I let it slide and continued on my way to the dry cleaners.

Commentary
For various reasons, not the least because I used to be a Girl Scout and I have my Emergency Preparedness pin, I'm usually quite willing to jump into emergency situations. Car wreck? I'm calling 911, directing traffic, and holding the victim's hand (not at the same time). Turtle crossing the road? I'm jumping out of my car and carrying him across. Hey, you define "emergency" your way; I'll define it mine.

On the other hand, over time I've become much more cautious about getting involved in volatile interpersonal interactions, which are usually what's going on if I hear one person yelling in the park. If someone falls off the slide, I'll usually hear several people yelling, so I know to run out there. But one voice gives me pause.

As I said, this has happened over time. I used to interpose myself in personal conflicts with great glee, confident that I knew exactly what to do. This has changed for several reasons:

1) I'm a religious pacifist now. At one time I was perfectly willing to counter a violent act with one of my own, or at least threaten to. That tool is no longer in my repertoire.

2) I'm very unwilling to give unsolicited advice these days. Partially this is because I hate when people offer it to me, but it's also because I often don't believe it's effective. When someone is having a screaming match with their spouse, I'm don't think they're in a place where they can hear me say they're behaving badly.

3) I'm no longer as convinced of my own righteousness. When someone's drowning, you throw them a rope, of course. But when a mother is smacking her child, and I've experienced this, she has just as much right to tell me I have no idea what her life and her child are like as I do to tell her that corporal punishment is wrong. Neither of us is wrong.

So I stay out of a lot more situations, but I don't like that solution, either. It seems cowardly and apathetic. Lately I've been trying standing near people who are in conflict and watching silently, in hopes of giving a "I'm here, I see, I'm part of what you need to consider" vibe. So I'm opening my eyes but not, unless asked, my mouth. Is that enough?

What did you hear today?