Day 92: They're Not Really Homeless if You Don't Make Eye Contact

I passed a man standing alongside the street a few nights back while out with a friend. He didn’t look homeless or drunk or strung out. He just looked like a normal guy that probably had a family and suddenly found himself unable to pay the bills or find work. The sign he held, though too faint for me to make out entirely as we sped past, said something about needing work and having references. Seeing him made it difficult for me to converse normally for a few minutes, but I moved past it that night. I have not, however, been able to get his face out of my head or how easily it was for a friend and all of us on the road that day to keep driving, without so much as a pause in the conversation.

Seeing people struggle is never easy for me. I give a lot of money and food to people whenever I see them on the streets. Several times I have been tempted to offer my couch and a hot shower, but as a woman alone, I do recognize that good will and dangerous behavior can lead to unfortunate consequences. There are faces that haunt me still, and a few experiences that anger me after the discovery that I’d been duped. Still, nothing distresses me more than acknowledging just how easy it is for most of us to not acknowledge any of them. For that matter, do any of us ever actually tune in completely to the world around us? Are you conscious of those we’ve hurt, ignored, slighted, angered, or overlooked?

Each of us is limited in what we can do, certainly, but rarely do most of us even try or approach truly reaching out. We write a check, spend a few hours volunteering, visit church one hour a week, join the PTA, these are valued contributions though they do not come close to seriously affecting our way of life. Do we give when we have little for ourselves? What do we actually sacrifice to the extent that overall way we live our lives is affected? We do what we can, though not what we should or nearly all that we can. We do what we can afford in terms of time or finance.

I believe that the ability to look past those in need or to argue that all of them are simply lazy or scammers is a way for people to escape the haunting faces of their neighbors, who ask not for great sums of money or worldly goods, but simple acts of humanitarianism. We see it, but do not comprehend that in our global society we are each responsible not just for ourselves but for our global sisters and brothers to whom we are interconnected. What happens to each of us ripples out and affects those around us. But if we opened ourselves to those ripples we would not sleep so soundly at night. We would not so easily drive past the man that looks like any one of us, rather than the dirty, disheveled picture of vagrants we have come to expect.

What if that man were me or your brother or your father or your friend. Would you still drive past, pretending not to see. Could you still sleep so peacefully after writing checks for your bills, eating a good meal, putting your children to sleep? The faces haunt me, but nearly as much as the knowledge that I do so little, really, to help them or to change the world. Still, I don’t talk about it. So who’s to say that you do sleep soundly? Maybe you’re haunted too, but it’s not the kind of thing we talk about is it? I don’t give them money and food because I am such a generous and caring person, I give them money and food because of the guilt I carry at knowing I could do so much more and simply choose not to.