I'm here again, sitting on my porcelain throne, I squeezed out my daily contribution to our civic septic system. Often sitting here has a certain... peace. I find myself thinking, and overthinking, about mostly my contributions - also possible future contributions - to my mental septic system. Today I find myself wondering about why I can't do the things I want to do specifically the idea I recently had to establish a charitable organization with the goal of helping homeless people reconnect - not so much reconnecting with other people or the world - more with their own humanity. But how... How can you possibly achieve that Jamaal??
I wonder if any of us stop and think about wether someone in our social circle, or family even, have had someone who has been touched, or taken by homelessness. Maybe you've been fortunate, maybe all your family and friends have been fortunate but I would hazard to guess that if we were to stick our feelers out into our six degrees of separation it wouldn't take very many degrees to realize that we all have someone in our lives for some reason or another believes that they are no longer wanted, that they are no longer loved. There may be someone only an arm's length away from you, who does not want to be themselves, in their lives... And so how could the world want them, the whole world - people on the other side, and the people right beside.
I don't have to wonder for myself or my loved ones... I, myself have struggled with mental illness for a long time I've battled it on the front of depression - that overbearing, overshadowing, and infecting hopelessness. And also battled on the front of PTSD, because when I was 16 year old teenager traveling by myself I got in a car with a stranger offering rides and there is nothing like what happened to me to impress upon a young mind but there's something wrong with them something nobody would want.
Some of us are fortunate though, that we were born into a large family, maybe... Or, that one finds and accepts us. And so, like myself some of us get to wake up everyday and see loving humans around us reminding us that we're wanted we're valuable...
we're human,
no matter what...
these people remind us...
that we're human no matter what!
I know for a fact there were times in my life that if I did not have my amazingly supportive wife, or my wonderful loving daughters... I could easily be homeless.
"But I can't do it. I'm not smart enough. I don't have the education. I'm not confident enough. I can't do it... "
These are the types of thoughts that automatically pop to mind for me when I try to think of doing anything, I become overwhelmed with these disparaging thoughts that try to find every crack every weakness in who I am and exploite them... All my fears about who I am as a person defined by what I know, what I've read, who I know, what I can do, and what I can't do.
Thankfully, I've learned through many years of therapy, counseling, and reading books, that these thoughts are mainly made up in my mind as a collection of critical thoughts and voices I've heard over my life, that I've left unchallenged. When I attempted something and struggled and felt like someone I looked up to thought less of me for struggling or failing... I took that moment as an impression saved it because watching someone I looked up to be disappointed in me was something I didn't want to feel. It hurt.
Have you ever disappointed someone, and felt horrible about it?
Have you ever disappointed someone and been made to feel horrible about it?
What if you began to believe that after so many times of being made to feel horrible for disappointing someone... that you must be horrible!
What if you believe that both; you will always fail and always disappoint someone, and also that this is because you are horrible.
I imagine a fair number of homeless people feel horrible, and when you are a horrible disappointment you're terrified of disappointing even one more person. And so a homeless person resigns themselves to just not trying because they believe they are always going to fail. I can see how they would come to believe also that anyone who previously cared or say that they love them no longer does... I'm not even homeless, but I know that the critical self-destructive automatic thoughts in my mind would go for the jugular every time. That if I were to ever think the maybe somebody out there still cares about me or loves me that it would be better for them to forget about me because I will never be any more than horrible.
So if I were to ask you, would it surprise you if you learned that homeless people choose to stay homeless because they're terrified of disappointing you, cripplingly. You - the people that they still love - who they firmly believe don't love them back.
And so let me ask you if you could pick up the phone right this moment to tell someone
that you love them
no matter where they're at!!
no matter what they are struggling with!! no matter how hard they struggle even if they never overcome their struggles - that you still love and care about them...
Would you?
Even if you couldn't help them get out of their homeless situation? (Would you feel bad about that)
But you love and care about someone you can't help?
If no? Why not?
I know it's hard to think about homelessness sometimes because it's a gruesome and ugly truth... And what can we do about it anyway?!?
Imagine for a moment - you or a close loved one was recently diagnosed with stage 9000 cancer, shaped like a tuna fish, heaven forbid. And were given 3 weeks to live... However, someone has devised a way to communicate with the cancer and hashes out how to cut a deal to stay your death - would you come to the table? What if the cancer wants to be left alone as is, no nuking or zapping it's members, and it will release it's tendrils from all major and essential organs and you get to continue living... Would you take it?
How surprised would you be if those cells started returning to normal functioning cells?
Hypothetically and metaphorically speaking.
I have a brother who is living on the streets of Vancouver right now. I don't have the money and or other resources to go and find him, but if I did ... If I could... I would give him the biggest hug tell him that he's always been my hero, I've looked up to him my whole life as my older brother, I know he felt a tremendous responsibility to be a leader of eight siblings to be a man a very young age... And I know, because I watched, he struggled, he lost jobs, he had disagreements with bosses and employers, he fights with authority figures in general, and yet... he carried on. I watched him never give up, never back down, and because of it, eat dirt on the regular. I know I learned vicariously through him that those who stand up, those who speak out, get kicked and stepped on.
And I'm pretty sure he just doesn't want to be stepped on. any. more. But he's still here, for now. And I bet with enough love and care, therapy, and counseling... He can see all his struggles as learning opportunities instead of failures. He can figure out who that makes him what that says about his character, but it needs to start with him wondering "who am I", he needs to realize that there's something worthwhile in that question, he's tucked that box away in the recess of his mind... Because it's also where he stores his failures and disappointments...
And the box will fight him, telling him that he's worthless because he will only fail again, and so therefore it's not worth it, he's not worth it...
I want to tell him the value he has brought my life though, I want to tell him I love him no matter what's going on, and I want to have a way to be able to reach him - to help him find his value as a human again!! Why don't we have a way to reach them?
Why do some of us not want to reach them?
Help me help us.
HumanCycle (name idea)
Egoless
