This Christmas, I was feeling frazzled and busy but I wanted to get a quick run in. The streets were almost deserted, rainy and unseasonably warm. “Almost” deserted because there were people out but, with only two exceptions, all the people I saw were homeless people. I thought, “Wow. It’s like the apocalypse. This is depressing,” finished my run and hurried home. Going through the garage, I saw another homeless woman who had taken shelter from the drizzle and was peeing in the corner. My first impulse was to call security but then I thought, “It’s Christmas. Leave her alone. She has no place to go. I’ll give a tip to the staffer who has clean up duty.” Then, I ran inside and got sidetracked with dressing up in fancy clothes, wrapping fancy presents in fancy wrapping paper and preparing fancy foods to eat and fancy beverages to drink.
My significant other had a very different reaction to a similar experience. Like me, he went outside to get a workout in. He went to a public park by the river and, like me, noticed an abnormally large number of homeless people out. He was working out there for about an hour. Two homeless men remained constant there. One lay on a bench staring up into the sky, unmoving, and the other, yards away, sitting by the river and staring. My SO left and, like me, felt depressed. He started to go home but then, unlike me, he stopped, swung around and went off in search of a grocery store with hot food. He purchased a hot dinner and drinks, returned to the park and asked the first man on the park bench if he would like to share a Christmas meal. The man said sure and then my SO asked if he would mind if they asked the other man by the river to join; he said sure. The second man didn’t speak much English but he got that it was a meal and the three of them set up the food on a wet park bench and sat down and tucked in and enjoyed a Christmas meal in the drizzle in a public park.
When I heard the story, I realized I had lost sight of what the holidays are really supposed to be all about. The lesson from his example was the best gift I got this year.
My significant other had a very different reaction to a similar experience. Like me, he went outside to get a workout in. He went to a public park by the river and, like me, noticed an abnormally large number of homeless people out. He was working out there for about an hour. Two homeless men remained constant there. One lay on a bench staring up into the sky, unmoving, and the other, yards away, sitting by the river and staring. My SO left and, like me, felt depressed. He started to go home but then, unlike me, he stopped, swung around and went off in search of a grocery store with hot food. He purchased a hot dinner and drinks, returned to the park and asked the first man on the park bench if he would like to share a Christmas meal. The man said sure and then my SO asked if he would mind if they asked the other man by the river to join; he said sure. The second man didn’t speak much English but he got that it was a meal and the three of them set up the food on a wet park bench and sat down and tucked in and enjoyed a Christmas meal in the drizzle in a public park.
When I heard the story, I realized I had lost sight of what the holidays are really supposed to be all about. The lesson from his example was the best gift I got this year.
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