Don’t Shelve Compassion for Homeless : Living: The downtown library has become a refuge for them and an open book on tragedy and hopelessness.
I am on my way to the San Diego Public Library, standing on a street corner waiting for the light to change, when I absent-mindedly slip off one of my shoes. Suddenly I am asked, “Excuse me lady, are you through with that shoe?” I turn to face a gnome of a man who looks 60 but is probably not yet 40.
He is neither obnoxious nor threatening, as he again asks, “Do you need that shoe?” What is he going to do with a woman’s black suede pump? I see that he is shoeless and beyond being concerned about whether his shoes match, much less their sexual orientation.
I smile and say as gently as possible, “No. I’m still using it.” Slipping my foot hastily back into place, I begin moving with the flow. He remains beside me, asking, “Any spare change?” I reach into my pocket and extract two quarters, dumping them into his hand.
He has broken into Ft. Knox. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
Struck by the sincerity of his response, I am moved to tears. Not over his gratefulness in particular, but rather, in response to this sea of humanity we call “street people;” this unavoidable, expanding subculture that serves as a daily reminder of our own vulnerability.
On some days there are so many of these fellow men and women sleeping on cardboard beds scattered among the palm trees that I think this must have been what it was like during the plague; to walk down streets lined with dying people and to be afraid to look anyone in the eye. The object then, as it is now, was to avoid identifying with them.
Adult magical thinking: If I don’t look at them, they don’t exist. If they don’t exist, my world is safer.
At the library I settle into a familiar place near an open window; the stench from unwashed bodies is often overwhelming. The library is used as a kind of day motel for the homeless. But most of the street people who occupy tables are actually attempting to read--some successfully.
One man selects a large picture book of far away places. At another table, a woman barks as she reads, oblivious to the fact that her book is upside down. The man across from me has been trying to read--an article on the newly proposed capital gains tax increase--but keeps nodding off.
These people aren’t lazy. Many of them are on medication, in order to keep them from harming themselves or others; zombie-like, they sit staring or sleep their days away. Others are hung over or mentally exhausted from the idleness that permeates their days.
It is no longer possible to have privacy in the rest room at the library; the doors have been removed to discourage the selling of drugs and sexual favors, as well as sleeping and bathing. Occasionally there is someone in the restroom who is psychotic and in mid-conversation with the air. As I struggle to maintain a modicum of dignity in my now-public stall, nonetheless I am drawn toward the “conversation.”
After I leave the library, I encounter more street people. I try to look directly in each person’s face. I do not wish to contribute to their invisibility, to their sense of nothingness. I don’t like being hustled for small change, but I try to treat each solicitation as unique. If a person is rude or menacing, I refuse to donate.
The world of the homeless is a nightmare: the loss of identity, dignity and family compounded by a growing sense of purposelessness, helplessness and hopelessness. Nothing to pull them into the future. Add to this, mental illness, chemical addiction and probable victimization in some form (most often sexual or physical abuse).
Yet they survive.
Until a solution arrives, we are going to live like this; culture and subculture, stepping on each other’s toes, offending each other. Meanwhile we need to do more than get used to it, we need to humanize it as much as possible.
Can you spare that quarter? How often do you hold back on principle, rather than economics? If you don’t have any spare change, or you’ve given all you want to give, why not exchange a few words? How much effort does it take to acknowledge someone, to let them know they have not blended in with the landscape; to let them know, “I see you.”
