when i was a teenager, my temple invited a man who was experiencing homelessness to come speak to us about his life. a classmate asked how he ended up unhoused; he said he didnât really know. he had a good job, a house, savings, until things started going wrong. https://twitter.com/venessawong/status/1296450191550287872
he said before everything went off the rails, he would never have imagined heâd experience homelessness. he thought of it as a distant problem, not something that would affect him. he said heâd looked at ppl experiencing homelessness with judgement, as though it was their fault.
but it just took a few bad years for him to lose everything, & find himself w/o a social safety net, w/o systems in place to help him, w/o a home, without options. he said finding himself without a place to live shocked him; it had never crossed his mind as a possibility before.
he was a remarkably kind and patient man, fielding the questions of a group of vapid, privileged teenagers with a gentleness we didnât deserve. he warned us not to get complacent, to be grateful every day because things can change so fast. i think about him often.
if this pandemic teaches you nothing else, let it teach you what that man taught me: the myth of certainty is only a myth. we have no idea whatâs to come â for us, our family & friends, the world. we donât know now &we never did, even if, at one point, it all felt fixed in place.
you should care about other people. itâs one of the most worthwhile parts of being a human. but even if thatâs tragically beyond you â my god, whatâll it take for some of u to see that creating safety nets & working systems to help struggling people is also caring abt yourself?
even if youâre the luckiest person alive, you canât know if that luck is going to hold. there is no money-back guarantee on your life. systems that exist to help everyone exist to help you, too, in the event that things start to go wrong.
as the original tweet suggests, even having done everything ârightâ isnât enough in our current situation. isnât it time we accept that âdoing everything rightâ is an impossible task, and isnât something we should expect of each other?
we canât fix the government overnight. we canât force those in power to change the systems that are harming people instead of helping them. but we can change the way we think, and accept that we all deserve help when we need it.
as things progress, i am sure we are going to see ongoing vilification of people who are financially struggling. that, as it always is, will be done in the interest of convincing those in better circumstances that poor people are to blame for their own misfortune.
but the truth is, in a world where nothing is certain, in a world where so many systems of injustice and so few systems of kindness exist, it is cruel and violent to blame people for their own suffering. itâs a kind of moral rot.
and if you canât see that â if you truly believe that people only deserve to lead a safe and comfortable life if they are at or above a certain level of wealth and privilege â well. then i guess you better hope you stay lucky.
if you have the money to spare, please consider donating some of it to help feed the many, many people who are struggling right now: http://rb.gy/hjx3dn
(iâm also still unemployed & still find doing this like swallowing a beehive; if (AND ONLY IF) you have it to spare iâd appreciate the help; if not thanks you for reading and good luck in these harsh times, iâm pulling for you!! venmo @ dylanthyme / http://ko-fi.com/dylanthyme )
oh shoot one last thing â thereâs missing clause in one of those tweets! it should say that while we canât force those in power to change our damaged, damaging systems right now, we can and must fight to put people who WILL change those systems into those positions of power.