Beyond Cliche

When we encounter a homeless person asking for a little help on the curb by a stoplight, most of us will offer a little financial assistance and drive on feeling we have done our part. We rarely give them a second thought. They usually fit the cliché we have fashioned of the damaged vet, or the mentally ill, or the alcoholic or drug addict who sleeps on a park bench or under a flat newspaper tent. A while back, however, I had an awakening. I parked near a young woman with 3 small children camped on the curb of a Whole Foods parking lot. She displayed a large handwritten sign asking for help but did not approach me or verbalize at all. She was obviously shy and appeared embarrassed by her circumstances. I couldn't just drop a dollar in the colorful basket she had set out and go about my business. She and her children did not neatly fit my homeless cliché. I was compelled to inquire.

Unexpected Circumstances

In a soft voice she told me that her husband was killed in an auto accident six months prior. Her little family had only recently immigrated from Sri Lanka after her husband landed a technical job at a microchip manufacturer in America. They had no family here and no people of means back in their home country. She had quickly run through their meager savings and had been evicted when she couldn't pay the rent. She didn't know what else to do.

From Invisible Cliché to Real Human Being

I immediately contacted colleagues in local social services and transported this unfortunate woman and her children to a shelter the social worker directed me to. Other social workers took it from there. They fed the family, found them a temporary home and began to help the woman seek employment in her profession as a schoolteacher.

Today the family is safe, and the young mother is taking classes to get her teaching certification while she works as an aide in a local middle school.

Not A Cliché

I recently discussed the incident with the social worker who found the little family shelter. I told her that encountering that young woman and her family opened my eyes. Even though I had never failed to toss a few coins to the homeless whenever they asked, I never saw them as unfortunates who were not necessarily to blame. I admitted that when I encountered the homeless in the past, my heart went out for a brief second but always found quick escape in the cliché that somehow their "dysfunctional" conduct was causing their demise. Here's what the social worker who had worked with the homeless for twenty years replied:

"That's no surprise. When I became a social worker, I had the same belief. In fact, I was even more deluded. I took comfort in the belief that my sane functional personality was just the remedy for all these poor dysfunctional people. It didn't take me long to learn, however, that my dysfunctional ego was more destructive than the personality disorders caused by sending young innocent men to fight the human race's dysfunctional wars. For a long time, my ego prevented me from seeing how many homeless were victims of war or spousal abuse or parental neglect or an institutional lack of empathy and some, like your young mother, just had plain bad luck. Like you, in the beginning I didn't see what was really going on. However, the day-to-day struggle of the typical social worker gradually turns invisible clichés into real people with complicated stories. That's when the work becomes truly meaningful."

Layer Upon Layer

The longer we tell the social worker's story in this blog, the more we uncover the many psychological, moral, and emotional layers that comprise the profession. It takes a dedicated, self-aware person to truly serve the marginalized.