What do you think about when you see a homeless person begging on the corner as you come to a stop at a red light? What do you feel when you see homeless people stumbling through the streets? Do you find yourself to be inherently separate from them?… I know for a long time I did, and in all transparency, sometimes I still do. Sometimes I felt sad, but this feeling was followed up with my rational brain saying, “Well yeah, it is sad, but they got themselves there,” the whole making your bed and sleeping in it too kind of reasoning. I lacked compassion and the willingness to understand them for who they are and where they came from.
Through mutual connections I discovered a soup kitchen dedicated to feeding the growing homeless population in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and began volunteering each Monday. Each day is unique and it is impossible to predict the temperament or behavior you will be graced with. Some people make direct eye contact but speak as quiet as a mouse, while others cannot sustain eye contact for more than a second, with their eyes wandering all over. Some are kind and grateful, while others are demanding and cold. It becomes apparent many of them are plagued with mental illness and addiction, but to us the most important thing is to make sure they are fed.
One particular day as I pulled into the parking lot and got out of my car a man was getting into the backseat of a car next to me, where two women sat in the driver and passenger seats. There was a strange umbrella apparatus blocking the view of what would have been the passenger seat window, if it were still there. I entered the building to begin work, however, there was a surplus of volunteers that day and the manager asked me to return in two hours. I agreed and returned to my car. As I sat in the driver's seat and reached the keys into the ignition I glanced to my left to see the same man sitting in the back seat begin smoking something off of tin foil. My body immediately tensed up, but I couldn’t stop myself from staring as I wondered what he was smoking. Heroin? Crack? Meth? After his hit, he passed the contents to the woman in the driver seat. It was irrelevant whether people saw them or not, this was the treat they had been waiting for all morning—forget the sack lunch from the shelter.
I sat there perplexed with a pit in my stomach and began to sift through the file cabinet of questions in my mind… Did homelessness or drug use come first? What kind of childhood did this man have? Were his parents around? Does the difference between his current reality, and what could have been, lay in hearing “I love you” or “I believe in you” a few more times as an adolescent? Did he suffer a tremendous loss, and discover life only to be livable with drugs? Were these people always destined to be seated in this car, smoking their way to an existence they could bare to live? I don’t think so, but there they were.
Two weeks later I was volunteering again, serving people lunch. I had just served a man, maybe in his 20s, and he was asking another volunteer, Pedro, for juice. It became evident he was physically here with us, but mentally worlds away. He commented, “You know, you guys are really awesome. You actually help the homeless community… You don’t just judge us for doing drugs and stuff. Thank you so much.” Flowing from his being was a heartfelt and genuine thankfulness. I thanked him, too, for coming to get lunch, and told him to have a good day. His gratitude was charming, however it left me feeling helpless as I thought to myself: no, we are not judging you… but also, I am not really here because I want you to keep using drugs and remain homeless forever. But what could I actually do other than give him food, a smile, and kind words?
Moments later I gazed into another man’s eyes, explaining his options for food and asked what he would like. He had various tattoos on his arms and face, none of them grabbing my attention until I zeroed in on the tattoos lining his eyebrows. Mara Salvatrucha. My heart hiccuped and I withheld from noticeably staring (although he did put the tattoo there, so I guess he probably didn’t care who saw it). He broke eye contact with me a handful of times, so I used these pauses to re-read the words above his eyebrows. Mara Salvatrucha. Mara Salvatrucha. Mara Salvatrucha. I was not mistaken. The tattoo seemed to have faded over the years, but by no means was there any intention to cover or remove it. I thought about the irony in that moment: to my left is Pedro, an El Salvadoran asylum seeker, and directly in front of me is a member, or possibly ex-member, of Mara Salvatrucha—one of the most violent transnational gangs not only in El Salvador, but also Honduras, Guatemala and the United States. Knowing how this gang functions, it is nearly guaranteed he has blood on his hands, whether it be a rival gang member or an innocent bystander. I couldn’t help but wonder whether he was from Central America or here in the United States. What led him to join the gang? What did he find in the gang that he did not have elsewhere? There was a warmth in his character; he was respectful and kind, addressing me with manners and giving thanks. If it were not for the tattoo, I would never have the suspicion he was part of a gang. And considering he found himself at a homeless shelter asking for lunch, I assume the gang life could not have given him everything he longed for.
Week after week I get a deeper look into the lives of the homeless community in Albuquerque. Surely, this does not mean I know everything about their lives and each choice they made, or didn’t make, in order to be where they are now. All of their journeys are distinct, marked with their own traumas and pain. If I lived their life from the day they were born, would I have ended up in the same spot today? One can never know exactly, but only ignorance and ego would rule out the possibility. Regardless, what comes through clearer and clearer is that we cannot talk about homelessness in Albuquerque, or America for that matter, without talking about many other challenges that weave into homelessness: affordable housing, eviction mediation, mental health, drug addiction, effective substance abuse treatment programs, public schools and education, international drug trafficking, law enforcement, the foster care system, public health, personal responsibility… the list goes on. Too soon we realize everything becomes one thing, and one thing becomes a multitude of things: nothing is ever as simple as it seems and there is no one-size-fits-all quick-fix. As John Muir said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
Adding to the perplexity of this multifaceted challenge—how do we mitigate and transform homelessness when the desire to change is hard to find, or obsolete? How can we help people who do not want to help themselves or be helped? And at that point, is it safe and reasonable to leave them to their own devices in the streets even though this spreads beyond their circles and impacts the community at large? Unfortunately, everything they do not want to deal with as individuals the community is dealing with; and the battles they do not face within themselves become challenges the community must confront collectively.
Lastly, I must ask: Can we really see ourselves as inherently separate from "them"? Are you and me that different from people in the homeless community? Sure, in a literal sense if you’re reading this I assume you have access to a phone or computer, and you have housing, like me. But take a moment and reflect on your life. Do you find ways to numb and ignore pain? Are there things you would rather avoid instead of doing the work to truly transform? What things need to change within you? Do you take responsibility for where you are at in life, here and now in this very moment?
Every time we choose not to take responsibility and ownership of our lives we are giving away our power to change. When we blame our current situation and why we are the way we are on something from the past or someone outside of ourselves, we simultaneously hand over our power to transform our current reality. After all, how can we transform or change our present reality if it has nothing to do with us but everything to do with things or people we have no control over? Surely, this does not mean we disregard the influence and impact our past and external forces have on us, rather we cultivate awareness and mindfully move forward. How can we heal the pain of yesterday that still lives within us today? How can we transform our lives from the inside out?
No matter who we are or where we are, our lives and world change when we first initiate this change within ourselves. We can all help transform the world by first tending to and cleaning our own internal landscape—our traumas, emotional baggage, limiting beliefs, addictions. Like Mother Teresa stated, “When we sweep our own doorstep, we can clean the world..” Everything begins within and there is no way around it.
While writing this I am reminded how, as humans, we naturally tend to avoid pain at all costs and are resistant to change. I know choosing healing and transformation is not simple and easy, but it comes down to which hell we want to choose—one that is never-ending and keeps us trapped until we die, or the other hell which is temporary, conquerable, and leads to a more meaningful life for the remainder of our time here. No one else can make this decision—the choice will always be ours.
I have come to adore many of the regulars I interact with at the shelter, even when it seems they aren’t entirely there. I have cultivated compassion, and love, as I try my best to understand homelessness and to see their humanity. Granted, as aforementioned, it is a complex topic that is hard to divorce from many other societal challenges. What can we all do about it? How can systemic changes transform our collective challenges? And how can individual transformation influence collective transformation?
With love,
S
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