Opening your HOME … (08/06/15)
Anybody can look at a successful man and see an upstanding citizen — anyone can glance at the handsome man in the suit & tie and feel admiration. An artist, on the other hand, can look at that same man and see the gnarled old beggar he will inevitably become (We can’t take any of it with us, after all).
Of course, an even better artist can look at an old, current beggar and see the successful young man that he used to be. And a truly great artist — a true Master of his or her craft — can look at an old, current beggar; a homeless man who is fully bedraggled & openly bemoaned, portray him exactly as he is, and somehow force every viewer of that vision to see the Kind & Successful young man he used to be … Even more than that, the Master can make anyone — even one with the suffocated sensitivities of a greedy politician — see that the Kind & Successful young man is still alive within that dirty, depressed body; that the beggar is not old or ugly or dangerous at all, but simply imprisoned inside a life ruined by poor choice or cruel happenstance (or both) …
Yes, the Master is the one who can remind us all of the clear yet quiet Truth that there never was a man or woman born who ever became less than the Kind & Caring community leader who still resides in his Heart — and that this remains ever true, no matter what the harsh winds of fate or the stupidity of self or the callousness of others have done to his or her outward appearance.
So, my Friends, the next time you pass a poor, homeless person on the street, have the humility to pause for a moment to remember the Good Man or the Good Woman who still lives within their downtrodden shell … Please have the humility to pause and look into their eyes with Kindness — and then please have the Courage to reach out and treat them like the more-than-worthy person of Success & Honor they to this day still truly are.
Thank you.
(inspired by Robert Heinlein)
“The pragmatics are clear: when the homeless are housed, cared for, fed, and given access to healthcare, their needs for emergency services decreases dramatically, their criminality and drug use decreases dramatically, and certainly, their well-being increases dramatically. An ethical argument for why the least among us ought, in the richest country on the planet, to have access to minimally decent housing and essential services is so self-evident it hardly needs emphasizing, and yet I emphasize it nonetheless: Who are we to turn our hearts cold to the plight of those most in need? It seems almost embarrassingly unnecessary to remind ourselves that the homeless are far more likely to have mental and physical disabilities, far more likely to have served in the military, and far more likely to have had traumatic experiences in their lives than the average person.” ~ credit to Heleana Theixos
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