What You Learn About Humanity From Living on the Streets

[Lisa Guliani]

I think this is a good article, written by a homeless woman in NY.
Thought I'd share it with all of you.
......................................

Passers-by mainly ignore me, a homeless woman sitting on the sidewalk or a bench. The people who do speak to me are either curious, or harpies who give me unsolicited and useless advice, or the more irritable who chastise me. I try to explain by example that there are good, decent, employable but destitute people in New York City.

Many people also assume that the homeless are all drug addicts, criminals or prostitutes. I am none of these things, yet I have seen the stereotypes first-hand.

I try to keep busy, doing whatever jobs I can find, often the kinds of jobs illegal immigrants now do. When I volunteered at a church soup kitchen, hoping to do my part, a stranger claimed all these nasty things about me in the presence of the minster and other members of the church. For years, she continued to make these sorts of remarks and warned new volunteers that I would steal from them. No one said a word in my defense.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36533.htm

 

[Thomas Alan]

I think this is a good article, written by a homeless woman in NY.
Thought I'd share it with all of you.
......................................

Passers-by mainly ignore me, a homeless woman sitting on the sidewalk or a bench. The people who do speak to me are either curious, or harpies who give me unsolicited and useless advice, or the more irritable who chastise me. I try to explain by example that there are good, decent, employable but destitute people in New York City.

Many people also assume that the homeless are all drug addicts, criminals or prostitutes. I am none of these things, yet I have seen the stereotypes first-hand.

I try to keep busy, doing whatever jobs I can find, often the kinds of jobs illegal immigrants now do. When I volunteered at a church soup kitchen, hoping to do my part, a stranger claimed all these nasty things about me in the presence of the minster and other members of the church. For years, she continued to make these sorts of remarks and warned new volunteers that I would steal from them. No one said a word in my defense.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36533.htm

Thanks for the link, Lisa: Sad, indeed, the turns a persons life can take and how cruel people can be. If we can we can reach out with help, if we can't help at the time at least do no harm.

Mac

 

[SovereignDove]

Thanks for sharing this Lisa. Her story helps me to put myself in her shoes, or at least to attempt to understand what it is like to be homeless.

 

[Mr. Premise]

I remember an experience of a friend of mine 20 years ago. He had a job and an apartment but looked a little scruffy. And he liked to get front row seats to concerts. This was before the internet and tickets would go on sale at record store chains like Target Records. So he would camp out on the sidewalk in front of Tower in Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA over night huddled under a blanket. So of course the Harvard students thought he was a homeless guy and so all night long he was verbally abused by privileged Harvard kids. Who are now 20 years later firmly ensconced in the elite. So yes, you can learn a lot about humanity with an experience like that but it sure is depressing.

 

[Lisa Guliani]

Yes, you do learn a lot from being homeless.
I sure did.

 

[whitecoast]

Yes, you do learn a lot from being homeless.
I sure did.

I've actually contemplated spending daylight on the streets on weekends before. Not to beg or anything... maybe carry a sign like those end-times apostles but with a more inspirational/cheerful/waking message. Seeing more people from all walks of life, and how they react differently to you if disguised as homeless, would definitely be eye-opening. Though definitely not as much as what you've experienced Lisa.

 

[griffin]

Yes, you do learn a lot from being homeless.
I sure did.

I'm sorry that you were ever homeless, Lisa. No one should be homeless, except by their own choice.

Appearances influence how people treat others they encounter, as another response illustrated and is related in Mark Twain's classic tale, "The Prince and the Pauper". Despite the fanciful setting and plot, the story is so revealing about how most people operate based almost entirely upon superficial appearances.

I've experienced this in my own life. Not homelessness (or not yet, anyway), but being treated badly in the mistaken apprehension of others regarding me. In the late 1970s I would ride the city bus from my middle class neighborhood to my job as a computer programmer downtown. I was quite good at my job, so management looked the other way as I let my hair grow down to my shoulders. Despite washing my hair every day and dressing well, the bus drivers tended to inspect my 35 cents bus fare very closely, and I detected a certain hostility from them, as well as from some other bus passengers.

They obviously didn't want someone not like them, perhaps a "dirty hippie", riding on the same bus, and none of them talked with me before evincing those reactions. In actuality, I'd graduated from the city's elite private liberal arts college with a philosophy degree, and was well employed and well paid.

It works the other way too, and the region where I live sees a lot of this, especially in the small towns and rural areas. One might be in a small town and meet someone dressed in plain and worn clothes and maybe wearing scuffed or even muddy boots, and get to talking with them, and be surprised by their grasp of topics that you'd never have guessed they'd understand or have any opinions about.

Sometimes, if you're in a local watering hole and they say they must go and then get up and leave, and you ask, the bartender will tell you, "Yeah, that's Mr/Mrs/Ms [whoever], owns [a farm / ranch / a section / a mill / a company / half the county], nicest person you'd ever want to meet." It's both ways.

No one should be homeless. I let an ex-Navy Seal crash on my couch for months because he'd got in a wreck that wasn't his fault right after giving me a ride somewhere. He was and is dangerous, the type of guy the police have to call for backup if they want to arrest him, but not for me. He's a friend.

Hang in there. It will all work out.

 

[Gimpy]

Yes, you do learn a lot from being homeless.
I sure did.

Same here.
It's not a situation that bothers me anymore, having lived through it, though seeing how other people react to it still drops my jaw.

 

[Lisa Guliani]

Nothing drops my jaw anymore. Comets would drop my jaw. Maybe one smallish one in the vicinity of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that would likely drop my jaw.

 

[Lan8r]

If by our suffering we truly learn, then there may be a place here, in the school of life for being homeless. Or maybe not.

I can't understand how we could ever allow another person to go without shelter, food and clothing. The simple basic necessities. Let alone how we could hold those 'without' in contempt.

It is shameful. It is inhumane. Anti-Human. And even though homelessness and contempt for our fellow man has been around throughout all of human history, doesn't make it right. Doesn't make it 'only human'.

Apparently, having thumbs has not helped us evolve in the least bit.

 

[Jacques]

Nothing drops my jaw anymore. Comets would drop my jaw. Maybe one smallish one in the vicinity of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that would likely drop my jaw.

Hum... I don't know if I will do that or do that

Unfortunately, it would not solve the problems.... we need more than one and not only at that place.

 

[l apprenti de forgeron]

Thanks for sharing, Lisa. Interesting and sad, but with some light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps soon all find ourselves in a similar situation. Although maybe we all here can "self-employ" ourselves when the system falls (there good "Moral Endo-skeletons" be needed more than ever!) and share with other normal people to navigate the coming storm.

 

[mabar]

Thanks Lisa, It reminds me when I went once to live/learn a week in the comunities Zapotecans in Oaxaca when I was in high school -found this site with similar images as I remembered _http://www.lacaoa.org/pauvrete_es.htm (the third one with the girl in blue is the “kitchen”)- I think that kind of experience was a good example of conscious suffering, from what I had been understanding from that term/concept.

What I had been learning in/from people is to value their humanity, had been monitoring myself in order to not treat bad/good because of their appearance or archetype appearance and still, I had found in myself surprises (not good behaviours unconsciously mostly- onto others. Locate where it came from, is a good reference what I need to work with, the book "Strangers to Ourselves" by Timothy Wilson is being helpful.