It is often difficult moving forward again following an epiphany experience, which would describe my three weeks in Colombia in February. I was in a passive, very vulnerable state while I was there and a lot of things opened up to me, and within me. Having to completely trust my host, whom I didn't know very well, in a place I had never been to before, and then adapting to a different culture, while living mostly in another language, and how this made me particularly open to others in a way that still hasn't changed much. Only, it is much easier still for me to ignore the homeless poor here in my own city than the ones I often encountered while in Colombia.
I suppose that was inevitable. Some of the homeless here in Vancouver also have addictions and other issues, but they don't seem quite so vulnerable as young mothers or young fathers carrying their babies in their arms while begging from strangers. And I know I'm being judgemental. But yesterday, I bought a chocolate bar for a rather aggressive homeless guy begging on the sidewalk. I had offered him food, since I was just on my way to a store nearby. He wanted cigarettes. When I said no, something else maybe, then he wanted a Mars bar, and demanded a Pepsi with it. But the store doesn't sell soft drinks, and he seemed quite annoyed when I told him I could only get him the Mars bar. But the store was out of Mars bars, so I got him a Caramilk instead. He grumbled something rude when I gave him the chocolate bar, while explaining that they were out of Mars bars, and naturally didn't say thank you, so I simply said cheerfully, "You're welcome" and then I walked away.
Let's just say that I'm not in any hurry to run into this person again, who I suspect could easily get aggressive and maybe also violent. I am also aware that not all street people are like that, and this isn't going to stop me from giving, but judiciously, of course. And it is difficult to feel compassion for someone who I feel threatened by.
Today, while participating in that strange and awkward choreography called social distancing I encountered a rather gentle individual panhandling, a much older man. But he held his empty cup right in my face, and there happened to be a burning cigarette in the same hand, and there was no way I could get close to his cup without getting two lungfuls of secondhand smoke, so he got nothing. I felt more badly about him for some reason, as though I had let Jesus down.
When twenty years ago homelessness was already becoming an irreversible fact here, and then two years later the newly minted BC Liberal government threw people out on the street for simply being poor and helpless, I went through two years of absolute outrage, and I think I maxed my adrenal glands. Like everyone else here who is still housed, if precariously, I have had to also temper my chronic outrage with the need to survive and simply get by in life, while still keeping an eye on the homeless. My three weeks in Colombia were sufficient to remind me of what I was in danger of losing.
Now, as we all have to stay away from each other, I still walk the streets, and still try to remember the faces of the people lining the sidewalks, while keeping an open ear and open heart to what I can do, if anything, to help, knowing full well that we are now all in this together, and that one day, we will also rise together.
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