Days 304-305: The fallen, the homeless, the disappeared

30-31082013

One day I was waiting for a bus and I started talking with a homeless man. He told me that he had three adult children which he had not seen since their childhood (the youngest had been around 5 when he “disappeared” from their lives), and that the children did not know where he is and he did not know where his children are. This made me think of all the people I've met who have told me that either one of their parents has “left” when they were young and that they have not seen this parent ever since. I was looking at the homeless man in front of me and realizing: He is one of those “missing fathers” – but he is here, he exists, he is not missing. Somewhere in this world his children are wondering what their father is doing, if he's still alive, why he left without an explanation, wanting to meet him, maybe, if only once more – and here he sits on a bench without a home and a family, regretful, hopeless and suicidal.

At the end of the conversation I shook his hand, and I was surprised by how warm and clean his hand was.

The self-forgiveness here is what I have processed for many years, so not all of it applies to who I am at the moment; some of this I have outgrown already. The behavior of the other people in the situation reminded me of these points and I wanted to write them out to be clear with myself, and also to not judge others for being resentful of homeless people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that homeless people – the people on the streets – have once “had a life” from which they have now fallen, and that they have not been born into a life on the streets. (This is very uncommon in Finland as far as I know; in other places people are in fact born into slums and extreme poverty.)

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to accuse homeless people for causing their own downfall, not realizing that this society has basically offered them no choice due to lack of support (education, resources, tools) for them, their parents, their grandparents and so forth, this lack of support throughout generations resulting in a person “falling” from society.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that homelessness is a consequence of who we are as a society.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent homeless people because I perceive them to be dirty, not realizing that they are not dirty out of their own will but because they have no place to wash themselves in.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that homeless people are lazy, not realizing that they are not offered chances to do things NOR the mental and physical support they would need to outgrow what the previous generations and our current society have passed on to them (i.e. addictions, powerlessness, self-abuse).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that people end up on the streets for various reasons, loss of income, loss of family and loss of sanity only being a glimpse into why someone might not have a home.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear homeless people because I have believed they might attack me out of jealousy, bitterness and spite – not looking into myself to see if I give them a cause to attack me, if I in fact create separation between us.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ignore a homeless person talking to me because I have wanted them to leave me alone and go bother someone else as I have feared they might attack me if I paid attention to them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize how immensely rude and arrogant it is to ignore another person who is trying to communicate with you.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that by ignoring another person I tell them they are “invisible” to me – that they do not matter to me – that they are not one with and equal to me; I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not recognize homeless people as LIFE – not realizing that while doing so I separate from myself what a homeless person represents and thus make myself less than LIFE as well.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try and keep homelessness out of my life because I did not understand what it was and why it existed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent homelessness because homelessness represented losing and death, a worst-case scenario, and I feared I would end up like the homeless people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not want to see that which I fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that homeless people have all had mothers and fathers, they have all been children, they have (mostly) went to school (at least in Finland), that they are people who have been born, grown up and lived just as I have, but that somewhere along the way because of how they were raised, how they were taught and how they were supported they fell out of the society – which is a phenomenon that tells me there is something wrong, because we shouldn't have a society from which you can fall out of.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from homeless people as human beings and as beings of LIFE.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to accept homelessness as an inevitable phenomenon that is a part of our society – not realizing that this is not the kind of a society I wish to create, build and uphold, and that a society is what the people make of it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that homelessness is a consequence of inequality and separation among human beings in thought, speech and action, and that it is thus not inevitable / unrepairable because I have seen that equality and unity in thought, speech and action – in who people are and live as – are in fact possible because this is in alignment with the physical reality, the equality and oneness of all physical matter being absolute.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge people who resent the homeless because I see myself to be “better” than them as I do interact with the homeless – not realizing that by thinking I am doing something “noble” by talking with the homeless I am feeding my ego and living as arrogance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think of the homeless as “lesser people” who need to be “given” mercy and kindness from the above, as if my time and effort was somehow precious and special and not commonsensical – that which needs to be done.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to elevate myself above the homeless because I have not fallen from the society - according to the rules of the game, I am still playing – not realizing that the game of survival only exists within the human minds and that if I believe the game to be real I lose touch of the physical reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the reason I am in a more fortunate position in the society than the homeless is because of arbitrary factors, not because I'd “deserve” it or be somehow entitled to it, and that I am in fact one with and equal to the homeless people because they are beings of LIFE.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge others for resenting the homeless because I have not wanted to face my arrogance and wanted to make someone else the “bad guy”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with anger to people who resent the homeless, because in them I see my own fear and helplessness.

When and as I see myself reacting to a person resenting homeless people by getting angry and wanting to show them an example of how to treat them better – I stop, I breathe and I realize that if I do this through anger or even slight irritation I am not focusing on what's best for the homeless person – I might not hear a word they say – as I am only concerned with my own behavior and how I appear to other people. I realize that my reaction of anger is triggered as I see my own fear and helplessness reflected in the person resenting the homeless, which I then exert and blame onto the other. I realize that if I would act from this starting point of anger I would not be helping anyone, as the homeless would not be heard, I would feed my ego and the other would witness an example of how to appear selfless, not how to actually be selfless. Therefore, I stop and I breathe, and I release the anger from me through self-forgiveness and breathing. I ground myself back into the physical. I move my focus into the homeless person ad ask myself: what does he/she need? I proceed with action from this perspective.

I commit myself to study and investigate how homelessness / falling out of the society as a phenomenon could be prevented in the field of education and child care.

I commit myself to continue to interact with the homeless / the fallen within and as the realization that even though I cannot save the world one homeless at a time (ego point – the savior) I will learn from the interaction and grow towards finding a real solution to inequality.

I commit myself to check my starting point when and as I interact with the homeless / the fallen and to thus make sure I am not approaching them through a high status.

I commit myself to interact with the homeless / the fallen without the assumption that their life is and has always been pure suffering, thus eliminating pity from my approach as pity often makes me blind to the mistakes the other had done.