Homelessness – Not about You or Me
We’ve all seen them – those men and women standing calmly at an intersection with a sign that says, “Homeless. Please Help. God Bless.” What do you do?
If your children are in the car, you may point to this person and say, “If you don’t bring your grades up, you’re going to end up right there beside him.”
Or, perhaps you are alone. You think for a moment. Another car pulls up behind you. You decide to continue looking ahead – no eye contact, no acknowledgment. As soon as the light turns green, you pull away, saying to yourself, “Thank God that’s not me”.
Or maybe you are on the way to a job interview or a big meeting. You hold up a couple of dollars in your hand and he shuffles over to take it from you. He says “God bless you” and you mumble something like “good luck” and roll up the window. You did your duty. Got some good karma. That’ll give you a boost with the Big Guy upstairs. It might even land you that job.
Sound familiar? It does to me. It’s easy to turn someone else’s suffering around and make it all about us. It stopped being about this person’s homelessness the moment they became an object lesson for us or our children. Or simply another way to get good karma.
Try this experiment. The next time you pull up beside one of these panhandlers, don’t think about how this affects you. Put yourself in his shoes. You don’t even have to give him any money. Just talk to him. Show him some respect and dignity. You may discover that he’s a lot like you – another regular Joe. He just happens to be down on his luck right now.
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Here is a link to a short NPR segment about a problem the homeless are facing in Phoenix – intense heat.
