homelessness starts at home

this will find elaboration later, but for now, i just wanted to out it here…

making a turn today i saw a homeless man standing on a street corner. he was holding a sign and wearing a blue sweatshirt. i wondered about him. i thought of him as a newborn baby, starting out as a life the same way everyone does. i wondered if his mother and father had dreams for him, for what his life would be like, for what they hoped he might become. or maybe he was discarded from the very beginning, not wanted or cared about, seen as a burden for existing. i wondered if he had any children of his own, a family, had any dreams left, had ever known caring arms. i wondered where he slept, what he ate, whether anyone ever talked to him, or showed any compassion toward him. i wondered if he was sick and in pain.

do we look through invisible people because we are afraid of how we could disappear too, ourselves becoming invisible to those driving by?

i made a lot of assumptions about the man in blue today, all of which could be totally wrong and probably are. i know nothing about him, about any of the circumstances that led him to his place on the corner in his bright blue sweatshirt holding a sign telling the world he was hungry and without a home. i could make up any number of stories about his life that led him to that street corner, none of which approximate the truth. i was merely driving by, sitting in a warm car, full from breakfast, needs having been met (for today), one of hundreds who would drive by him...finding it difficult to really look at him. i felt sorry for him, which felt pretty useless. feeling sorry didn't feed him or clothe him or provide him a home or make anyone care about him. i drove by, just like everyone else, still feeling sorry, and also feeling shame for looking through him too...too afraid of what he represented, the potential to be cast off and thrown away, forgotten and unloved. in the past i have stopped to provide what cash i had on me or purchased a meal and/or a drink, and given it with a kind word and a handshake. did making just one minute different in someone's life make any difference at all, or did it merely make me feel better for the moment?

the man today seemed real in a way others haven't before, closer, more personal. i looked down and realized i was wearing the same kind of sweatshirt as the man on the corner. his was blue. mine was red. his was worn and dirty. mine was clean and bright. our lives may have been very different today, but there we were, wearing the same sweatshirt, intersecting.

i'm inside, sitting at a computer, full now from dinner, comfortable and sleepy, wearing my red sweatshirt.

it's cold and raining tonight...his blue sweatshirt isn't nearly enough to keep him warm and dry.

the experience inspired me to write this to myself:

carry brochures for local homeless shelters, labor-ready type day labor places, free counseling centers, and government welfare offices... if he does not want to remain homeless and begging, he does not have to... if he is stuff in a self-destructive psychological loop, he needs professional counseling... i might go as far, if i felt it was safe, to offer to drive him and walk with him into to any one of the places i mentioned above... sit with him while he waits for the people inside to offer what they can... above all else, help him face the fact that a day labor place will, on most days, offer him more than enough to feed himself, bathe himself, wash his clothes, buy a new shirt, sometimes enough to buy something more, even a room in a boarding house... and the opportunity to regain his self-respect and change his habits if he wants to...

or you could enable his helplessness and assuage your ridiculous learned guilt by giving him a dollar... i think that is a futile and destructive choice, but that's just my opinion based on my experience...

putting a band aid on a broken arm might seem like a moment of kindness and feel good emotionally, but the arm needs a whole lot more to heal well...

same for a broken psyche...

and as for you...

you did not take anything from the man... you did not physically or emotionally destroy his self-esteem or put him on the street... you did not make him give up on himself... your guilt feelings are your choice based on the mixed up psyche and stuff you learned from religion... don't use him to try to put a bandaid on your broken arm, it will not work and only enables the self-defeating emotional habits and mixed-up thinking that somehow has you feeling responsible for someone else's experience and choices...

love you :)