The Homeless People, So Sad

this is why there is a missing photo! https://medium.com/illumination/people-are-being-sued-for-using-creative-commons-images-adc5c8ba1491

The Homeless. I feel their souls.

I have now just moved back to downtown Tallahassee. I explore the streets and pretty side streets eventually to visit interesting cafes and other places.

I see some homeless people on every walk. Usually, they stake out a busy street corner to beg for money or food. Today I saw someone with their sign and then about three other men sitting nearby. Each of the men will take turns with that sign and after the day is over, they will split up the takes.

Today, I, to myself, summed up many of their lives.

I sort of sense, metaphorically, a street lined with shops. Each shop represents a cultural way of life that one can “enlist” in. Then that person builds a self-concept around such shops, one shop or more as he grows older. Shops like “liberal activist”, “sports angler”, “spelunker” [cave explorer], “housewife”, and 1001 more. Take a simple one like a spelunker. When a person becomes really interested in cave exploring, one has to join a club, be social with the Boys, [dangerous to explore alone], buy the gear, and talk the talk with your good ole boys fellow cavers. This “shop” becomes your identity, after a while. I have even met husband and wife cave explorers.

Thousands of shops. Choose one or more.

But suppose some people do not Choose! There might be many reasons for no choice, reasons such as dysfunctional family childhood, insanity, or some other reason. They missed out. Research has found that there is a neurological window in childhood brain development where if you do not learn something at an early age, you might could never learn it! They have shown that if you take away a baby bird from its nest brood, raise it by hand until nearly full-grown, then place it back with its nestmates, this bird will NEVER learn its species’ song!

So here are several mostly men who bypassed entering social ways of life, never entering to sign up at any “store”. Too late now! Not only is brain development against you, but many such ways of life also need a long prep time, like from high school onwards. So, today, they have no skills.

Ah, but they DO! There is a shop that they have signed up for! And guess what this shop is, you all. It is being homeless! It is a way of life. I think that at least 40% of the homeless have more friends than you do, reader! They know what days there is free food at certain locations. A large city might have free food somewhere for at least two meals a day all week long, in different locations.

Drugs? Booze? We all “normal” people have television! And… drugs and booze!

Reform?!

Just think, you all. Get a homeless man off of the street and somehow wipe his character so that he has an empty store where “homelessness” filled his self-concept. Now what? You, counselor, might wish to fill this empty space with *your* concept of a good life! Give to him a key to *your* store. Is your store pure and good? Will you just give to this person a drive to get lots of money including clawing his way to the top, climbing Up by walking upon the heads of the people below?

The Blind Leading the Blind!

What makes you feel that your way of life is the Answer to his void?

I had a long talk, once, with a *very* angry homeless man. Essentially, he tells me that yes, they will help him if he takes thorbenzidrene three times a day, and yes, the side effects will make you a zombie but hey, You Are Being Helped!

I had to agree with him on all of his anger issues! He just wanted to be alone, away from society and its demands upon him, crushing his soul.

He lacked, though, the skills and training to be a real hermit, say, in the Idaho mountains. If he cannot get away, as he needs food and other needs, his substitute solution might be to booze and drug himself into stupor-bliss; better that than to feel utter rejection from everyone, adding to his feeling of emptiness of Soul!

[“to our valued customer; you can only remain here longer than 20 minutes if you order a full meal”. He knows who this sign is made up for. “Valued customer” means someone with $$$, and in this society $$$ is the measure of a man and woman. He has no $$$.]

Over-simplified, of course, my brief article. There are many reasons why any one person is homeless.

I live in an Independent senior residence. You have to be 62 to live here. The efficiency apartments are really nice. I see, though, that “homelessness” exists even when one has a wonderful home! Many seniors are soul and spiritually homeless. Like a man who lives alone, his wife died three years ago, and he now has no reason to live, but he is only 69 and there is nothing he sees of any value until he dies, ten or even twenty years from now!

Depression. Bitterness. “Poor me”. He cannot get out away from himself but he sees that this self is empty of meanings.

One can be “homeless” in a mansion with a CEO salary of $300,000 a year!

“homeless” is really a state of Soul.