Don't pass judgement on the homeless stranger!

[NW Admin]

I have spent the day searching for my next video highlight for the New World home page. I ended up viewing many many documentaries about the homeless crisis in America. As usual, my research leaves me feeling deeply saddened and mad at society for not helping more.

I talked before on this site about how you should not pass judgement on homeless people you know nothing about. There simply is NO WAY you could ever know what that person has been through in their life and if they are a loser or a good person. Especially in these times, you cannot just assume that these people are worthless or that they do not deserve anything better.

Even the people who you see that are homeless and clearly on drugs/alcohol... don't pass judgement. So many of these people once had good lives then something traumatic happened and pushed them into desperation. When things get so bad and you lose hope, it's no wonder people turn to alcohol/drugs to numb the pain. Then before they know it, they have an addiction. Sure, it wasn't a good choice to start that, but we all make mistakes and many people are just in denial that dabbling with substances will get them hooked. That does not make them a bad person.

So someone's life falls apart and they can't stop it. In a quickness you can lose everything so easilly. Once you have lost your job, your home, family... it's hard to recover. Especially now when the economy is so terrible.

So many ways to fall apart. So many things that can go wrong. So much that would be out of your control. You don't know. You don't know what has happened to them.

Example: A happy couple living as middle class. She is an office manager and he is an electrical engineer. They have a lovely home that they have owned for 3 years and they are trying to have a baby. One day she finds out she has cancer. She becomes very ill and the doctors bills (even with insurance) begin to pile up. Eventually she cannot work so they are relying on his income now. They are both stressed terribly and scared. Then he finds out that his employer's company is doing badly, goes bankrupt, and he is laid off with none of the benefits he was supposed to get. They are panicking now. He's trying to find a job, but no one will hire him because they aren't hiring, he's over qualified, or the company hired the less experienced guy who will take less money. Soon they have no savings left. They have sold all assets to pay bills. Then they can't pay the mortgage. They have borrowed to the point that now their credit is about to be destroyed. They lose their house and all the while she is still fighting cancer. They have no other family to help so he lives in their SUV outside the hospital. He still tries to find work, but now that he has no home address it's even harder to get a job. She loses the fight with cancer and he is left alone. Depressed and lost in the world, he turns to alcohol to numb the pain. Becomes addicted, loses his SUV, and is now living on the streets with an addiction. Just a shadow of the strong working husband he once was.

I could draw a million portraits of how someone's life is destroyed and it's out of their hands. These homeless people are the ones that were strong enough to keep going when others probably would have committed suicide.

Then there are the children born into terrible situations. Their parents have addictions and are abusive. Maybe one of the parents aren't around. Maybe they are orphaned at some point. They slip through the cracks of society and grow up with little potential to thrive. They aren't given the opportunity for an education. They aren't taught how to live and be successful or about the ways of the world. They turn to other people with similar situations and together they try to survive. They can't help the way they are or the way they are living because that is all they know. They haven't seen life the way happy successful people have. They are not raised with the motivation to better themselves or do something with their lives. All they know is survival at it's most basic. The people around them are on drugs/alcohol and naturally they end up the same way.

I always think to myself... I can't imagine that someone would just choose to live that way. And a lot of people try to say that is exactly what they do. I'm sure some people do make that choice to some extent. But think about how it would feel during the winter when you are freezing and starving. They can't just stay huddled in a little box even when the snow is falling. They have to eat so they have to find food out in the cold. They can't leave the few items they have because some other homeless person might steal them. So they drag it all around with them. How that must feel to sit on a sidewalk knowing people are thinking you are a loser. How it must feel to be forced to eat rotting left over food from a trash can.

It truly is a sad situation.