13th June, 2009 - Homeless

A few entries back, I mentioned my guilt dilemma about whether I should give to a beggar or not. For some reason (maybe it was just writing about it) I can’t get the bloke out of my head. He was painfully young and pale and sad-looking. You can’t help wondering about the chain of events that took him to that point.


I have a pal that works in the local job centre who works with the long-term unemployed, and she says that the thing she notices with the people that she works with is that they all seem to have had significant tragedy in their lives. And usually not just one event – it’s often three or four significant kicks in the teeth, one after the other. Death of a spouse, followed by illness, followed by loss of job. And so on. And so on.Until stability breaks down, and your life falls into a spiral of despair.

I suppose we all like to think that we’re resilient, but I suspect that we are all only a few links in the chain from sitting in the street. Stability, I think, is tenuous.