New Year's Resolution

I want you to really have a think about this article, because it’s something that I’m very sentimental about. Picture in your mind a man, or woman, lying on a sidewalk somewhere, wrapped in a sleeping bag that’s been delicately rolled out on some well-worn cardboard. They look tired, as though life itself has worn and weathered them down in such a way that they now fit your image of homelessness. 

Notice for a moment how the dirt and sweat and grime has managed to settle in the creases of their skin, so that their face looks almost like a sketched drawing. You see their ears, and notice that they’re maybe a little too small or too big for the size of their head, and it reminds you of someone that you know from work in that sense. As you continue to look at them, you see their entire worldly possessions within arm’s reach. Maybe a bag or two packed with little niceties like a change of clothes, some deodorant – you can’t guess beyond that because all that you’re thinking of is that you can’t imagine having so little.

Now at some point (if you haven’t already) you’re going to go one of three ways from looking at this person: apathy and simply not caring to even bother yourself with it; labelling this person a bum and producing judgements that manage to blame them for their current station in life; or feeling a sense of sadness or pity for the image it conjures up. Whatever the reality is –and please don’t let it be options one or two – we as a society should have higher expectations for what is and is not tolerable.

Do you remember when you were a kid thinking about what and who you wanted to be when you were older? Because I’m fairly certain that no child goes through life wanting to be homeless when they’re older, or living in a state of poverty, or suffering from addictions or diseases that cause them to be judged as social pariahs that are worthless or merely looking for a handout. No five year-old would want that, but the reality is very much the opposite for too many as life should have it. You can say what you want about the subject, but if you can justify the idea of a child living on the street or struggling through poverty, then you’ve lost yourself my friend. 

Frankly, we as a society have lost ourselves. While I admit to being an idealist I make no apologies for it, which is why I ask how it is that a nation like Canada, a member of the elite club of industrial and economic powerhouses in the G7, allow its own citizens to live on streets with a passive acceptance for it as simply being the way it is? I can’t for the life of me understand that. I can’t understand how there isn’t enough food for many in our country, or how the poverty line is so low and we seem to be more concerned with hoarding wealth than making sure those in the hardest and most challenging positions have the basics. And when I say basic standards, I don’t mean the basic standards for living because that’s rubbish and an easy cop-out and certainly if many of us were in such a position we would be shouting for more. Instead I mean the basic standards that WE would accept for our own lives; certainly if many of us were in such a position of poverty and degradation as living on the street our hope and expectation for help might be at least as loud.

We need to do better folks. We need a stronger position when it comes to issues like homelessness and poverty, hunger and education (though there are more issues than that...). Five year-olds don’t dream of living on the street, and teenagers or adults shouldn’t have to go through life with that as their reality. We need to rediscover our own humanity, because we’ve lost it and people are suffering because of it. It’s often said of teams that they’re only as good as their weakest member; if that’s the measure of our society and country, then surely on paper we’re not a very good team. We need to resolve how we can overcome this to be the great team we’re capable of, regardless of what justification might be necessary to get to that point.  

These are tough issues that we need to take on, with obstacles (some imagined) and different views towards what are the appropriate policies needed to combat them. But it needs to be done and the measure of our effort should not be a minimum standard, rather it must be our maximum humanity. If we can’t get to that point on policy then we don’t deserve to call ourselves a great society, nor a decent country. Hopefully we can fix this (and other blatant issues) and allow for a strong and eternally compassionate Canada to emerge, so that we care for others as though they were five years-old, with nothing more than thoughts of Mickey Mouse in their minds and care for others in their hearts.