I saw this man while walking home from the beach one day. He is not the first homeless, sleeping man I have seen during my time here in Alicante, but it was what he had with him that I noticed. Lying slightly underneath him was a grocery bag, with a bottle of alcohol in it. It just makes me wonder, what was the circumstance that brought him to be homeless. With what money did he use to get the bottle, or was it given to him? Maybe even stolen? Also, if you are homeless, why aren’t you spending your money on food rather than a beverage that not only alters your state, but makes you even more hungry. I would just like to understand further, because I realize that they could be a victim of circumstance, but I also know they could have done it to themselves. Sympathetic or Apathetic?
If you walk down the street and see someone in a box, you have a choice. That person is either the other and you're fearful of them, or that person is an extension of your family.
ReplyDelete-- Susan Sarandon
“[Local political leaders] need to live with us one night. Let them lose their homes and jobs and bank accounts; they’ll go crazy.”
“Ask the City Council to hang out and sleep and eat with us for a night or a week. How many people are gonna leave their warm, snuggly homes to go sleep on a cold slab of concrete? And #1, you’re already trespassing. And you got nothing except your stuff stashed in a bush. You got a blanket that you stole – that’s another charge. When I’m about asleep, it starts to rain. Now I’ve got to find someplace to sleep inside. And I got to pee. Now you’re breaking and entering. Not ’cause I want to. But the police don’t care what you got to do to get through the night. I’m just trying to survive. We are you without a job.”
"There is much suffering in the world - physical, material, mental. The suffering of some can be blamed on the greed of others. The material and physical suffering is suffering from hunger, from homelessness, from all kinds of diseases. But the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, having no one. I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience."
-- Mother Teresa (1910-1998)