Sleepless and aimless, I decided to take a midnight walk with intentions to tire my body and perk up my soul. As I walked, I began to think about what it meant to live in a metropolitan city such as Seattle. Now, I know that the city isn’t for everyone. Living in the city, among other inconveniences such as noise, pollution ect requires a certain level of tolerance towards suffering. New Yorkers are jaded because they have, arguably, seen it all. We too, as Seattleites, are known in the nation as residents of a major port city and with this brings not only generous attention from the media and wealthy residential status, but all the grief and strife many large cities attract. Living in a city means dealing with this daily, if not more often. Growing up in small town suburban America, I vaguely have any recollection of witnessing first hand any crime at all. I remember being told about homelessness and drugs like they were urban legends and nothing more. Horrible things that occur to horrible people and since we have money, we are good people. Even as a child I was a skeptic to my mother’s suburbanite myths. We know now, as adults, that crime and the like do not directly coincide with bad people nor are the two mutually exclusive. So, as I strolled down Broadway, meandering betwixt my meager upbringing and its paltry truths of life, city life and its troubles, literally, reached out to grab me. This is why I LOVE the city. Few people would consider being in such frequent contact with the homeless a plus on a neighborhoods status list, but me, I am different. These are the things that life is made up of. And if you care, it’s there. Not in a myth somewhere up north, but right there, at two in the morning, reaching out for nothing other than a spare buck or two to quell the pain of hunger. Nothing elicits more fear for some city dwellers than a midnight run in with homelessness, drugs, crime or any/all of the above. Of course I must belong in New York because it is not fear that dilutes the serenity of my evening stroll, it is empathy, it is grace, it is compassion.
We talk of the homeless and vagrants of the city as if they are the mountains, too far off to be tangible and too elusive for any immediacy. The Seattle Times editors, talented as they are, feature exclusives on them, feeding off of public interest and the tendency to be fascinated by what we can look down on and afraid of what we don’t know. I wonder if they have felt what I felt this night. I wonder if they were torn on weather or not to help up the old woman at the bus stop and buy her a hot meal or cross the street, curtailing any possible conflict and keeping safe my personal surroundings. Bus stop after bus stop, storefront after storefront, sleeping bag after sleeping bag. They line our streets at night and vanish during the waking hours, not unlike the rodents we treat as one in the same. They are old, young, sick, and healthy all sharing one thing with those who walk above them, beyond them and with no regards to their well-being, they are all human, just as we are. However relatable or not, they are separated by an invisible shield, making it inappropriate to simply reach out and help. They are, to us fortunate ones, a theory of grief, a mere depiction of suffering and loss. We read about them, hear about them and may see them as well but we do not embrace them. And so they become more and more what we want them to be, untouchables. Isolated from the rest, they live and we live too, but only feet from them, on the same streets they inhabit, we live and under the same rainy sky, they sleep. The enormity of homelessness has raised this concept, abstract to most, to a pandemic level. And they suffer silent and ashamed, hungry and callused as we try to ignore their presence, drop our dollar in their cup and pass on, as society has allowed us to do.
Unfortunately, contrary to the media, money isn’t everything. Not even for the homeless. Sure, with money they can possibly find housing and food, but can they ever begin to buy back the dignity they lost when living on the streets? Can they wash away the shame that stained their cheeks more resistant than tears? Can they ever resume normal public status after we have spit at them and tossed some change down in their gutter? More must be done to help these individuals regain progress. We must embrace them as part of this city, part of the beauty and part of the problem.
