Sunday morning musing

This morning as I locked my bike up in a bleary-eyed Sunday-city, a familiar confusion roared through me like wild fire. Why, under these blue skies, in this country, on our city streets are people so young crumpled behind neatly written cardboard pleas for spare change? Why, in a city where the Lord Mayor and her opposition candidate battle it out for the top job by promising free Wi-Fi city wide, more facilities for cyclists or more affordable – but not social – housing, does someone my age with four limbs, clear eyes, a faint smile and the ability to write a neat and correctly spelt sign feel that this forlorn begging is the only option left to them? Why is this the case in every affluent city and country in the world?


In Australia at least we live in a social democracy which, for all its problems, provides welfare, public housing and services to the impoverished. So why still this lack? Why still does a family feel its only option is to live in a caravan in a free camp?

Throughout human history there have always been the poor and the homeless. Barely a century ago it was believed to be the fault and crime of the low born that they were born low and some still seem to hold this for truth.

And yet there has never been this much support for people in our society before. The idea niggles at your brain, a feeling of rising indignation, why should I hand out my hard earned change reaped from hours of my own toil, to someone simply sitting, asking, waiting – throwing their hopelessness before me as if purposely to disturb my thoughts? For truth be told, I, we, the most-of-us, we have enough. We have Buckets of Enough. And so? We pay taxes which eventually filter into government welfare cheques – why do they need my change?

Why indeed? Some of ‘them’ carry the burden of disability, mental illness, the misfortune of being born in to undesirable circumstances, others seem to have tripped and fallen along the way on drugs, alcohol or other faults, seemingly of their own making.

But in the end, does it matter how they got there? The fact of the matter is that the gutter is where they are and they, them, are really just us. For someone to kneel before you and quietly persist through the indignity of begging there must be a genuine need – mustn’t there?

“And if we empty our pockets of rogue 5c bits into their open palms, what will they spend it on?” barks the cynic. Addiction and debauchery no doubt. So give them nothing, or give them food.

But no – for doesn’t the human heart require more than just food to survive? Yes – in this world, we need those dollars. And if it still sits uneasy, as it does with me in my general confusion at this world, then give to the outreach programs that may one day provide this person with the opportunity to realise their abilities.

Giving money to the homeless may be about as much ‘solving a problem’ as pouring aid into Africa year after year is. But however you choose to react to another human asking for help – don’t ever just walk past unchanged.

Signed,

Equal parts cynic, pessimist and idealist.