The Comforts of Home

Tonight I sit in the comfort of my living room and I wonder about the plight of the homeless. In the town near me, there seems to be an alarming and growing population of homeless. Their needs are beyond what I can conceive from my seat in my own warm home. There's a page I follow that's a "gossip" page and there is a post about a homeless man who needed some way to stay warm and out of the weather one night this week. The person who posted had spoken with the homeless man and was requesting help for the man for shelter and warmth. The overwhelming responses were from people willing to donate blankets, financial resources to help the man seek shelter, to bring warm meals. This warmed my heart. However, there is always one.... 

One of the first comments I saw read: "Has he applied for jobs? Has he?" 

This got my blood pressure up pretty quick. Why? What's so wrong with this question anyway? Well, hold on a minute while I clamor up onto my soap box. 

Here we go....

Let me start with the idea that whether or not this man is worthy of assistance seems to be tied up with whether or not he has applied for jobs. This is wrong on so many levels. Starting with the fact that the man deserves to be sheltered and fed whether or not you want to know about his job history! Don't even get me started on the entitled dictating to the less fortunate how to pull themselves out of the gutter. This chaps my hide faster than you can say "boo." Most of us have no idea what it is like to try and survive on the streets. When you're cold and hungry and dirty and haven't showered for days, is it really realistic to think you should be out pounding pavement for a job? In education, kids come to us hungry and tired and stressed out on the daily. Educators have the saying "Maslow before Bloom." Bloom's taxonomy of learning is central to education. And we all know about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Your basic physiological needs must be met before you can address even the next hierarchy of safety (i.e. employment), and learning is hirer up yet. But for our homeless man scenario, the first items of business would be finding a place out of the wind and rain, finding food and a place to rest of the night. The brain cannot focus on the need to be gainfully employed or how to reasonably achieve this when those baseline needs are not met. Can I get an amen? 

Now, the pendulum does swing both ways. One poster said that she had a camper in her backyard hooked to electricity and he could stay there. That seemed foolish to me. Another poster mentioned that the homeless man of mention had attacked them previously. And desperation makes people do crazy stuff. I am not sure I'd invite this homeless man or any homeless person to my home and expose myself and all my earthly possessions to them. But I've been down and out and I have witnessed the goodness of others who have reached out and taken care of me. I can't discount the need for people to be good to others. I have been the recipient of such goodness. Maybe that is why I'm such the bleeding heart. I just get twisted off pretty fast when people are hard on the down-trodden. Show some compassion for goodness sake! Or badness sake! For sakes people! Be compassionate! You do not know anyone else's story or the depths of their sorrows!

March is "Slice of Life" month when teachers (in particular), educators and students link up and commit to write daily for the month of March. If you want to experience other Slices of Life writings, click on Slice of Life icon and it should take you to today's post. Links will be in the comments.