Tonight I ran out to pick something up for dinner because I just wasn't in the mood to cook nor did I have anything that sounded good at the house. I have to say that I'm always thankful to be at a point in life that despite the struggling economy and the fact that I'm currently out of work, I still am able to pay my bills and have the luxury of running out to get something to eat. Granted, I've been fiscally responsible and have planned for a "rainy day", but I've also been lucky to have been brought up in a family that taught me the value of doing such a thing at an early age.
On my way out of the place I picked up dinner was a man standing by the parking lot. As I walked by he practically whispered "can you spare some change?" He was a clean man, perhaps just down on his luck. I said very quietly as I was reaching for my keys - "just a minute". I went to the truck, put my food in and looked at the change I had received for paying for dinner - it was $7.00. I look at it for a second, grabbed the $5.00 bill, went back over to him and he was sitting on the ground looking at the ground. I held out the $5.00 and said "here you go." He looked up at me a little slowly and then seeing the $5.00 bill, his eyes lit up and he smiled. He said "thank you SO much" and it felt so genuine that for a moment I wanted to cry. I said "your welcome" and turned back to walk to my truck. As I walked away he said "have a good night" and when I turned around to say thanks he was still smiling the huge smile at me.
I don't tell this story to pat myself on the back but to share something that really bothers me. I see people asking for money all the time. A day doesn't go by that I don't pass a person on a corner with a sign up. My somewhat internal rule is if the person asks me directly, I will give them money...I simply can't imagine a world where there would be no options but to walk up to strangers and ask for money for food - that feeling makes me so incredibly sad.
So my challenge is this...how can you tell who really needs help and who really just doesn't want to work, or worse, has an addiction to something that drains their health and wealth? I know that the question itself can seem callous but as I've seen it so much, I always find myself wondering how you can know. The truth is, I'd love to help every person I can because as I said, I just can't imagine what a person must go through to do that. I think of the thousands and thousands of immigrants that came to this country to make a better life for themselves only to find that their future generations are struggling. I guess the answer to my question about "how can you know" is that you can't. There is no magic formula.
I don't know if I'm just getting older or I'm just paying attention but sometimes these thoughts are overwhelming. Granted, I live in one of the largest cities in the United States and with that comes these types of daily challenges but sometimes what I'd really like to do is buy them a meal, sit down with them and understand their story.
When I was in grad school, one of the classes required that you worked in a soup kitchen or one of those types of organizations. My group went down to Long Beach to work in a homeless shelter. At least in this shelter, there was food and a place for them to sleep but talking to people who "lived" and worked there, they had incredible stories. Stories of being in jail, the things they had done and what led them to where they were now. I remember being blown away by these stories. At the end of our time there, the organizer of the shelter talked to us and told us the truth about some of the folks we had talked to. The "truth" was a lot different that the stories the people had told me.
Now I know that everyone has their own version of their life story - sometimes we are honest with ourselves and sometimes we are not. I know that there is psychological damage, mental illness and about a thousand other things that people can suffer from. But learning the "truth" about the people I had met in the shelter just added to my confusion about how do you know who really needs help? And can you ever really "help" someone in a situation like that?
I guess, in the end, anyone who asks for it needs it but I (somewhat selfishly) want to know that the money I am giving them is going to feed them and/or their family, not feed an addiction. I don't want to enable, I want to help. Given that, perhaps I'm the one that needs to change...perhaps I need to not worry about what people do with the money I am giving them to try to help...
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