My Neighbor

The old man was kicked to the curb. Stomped out on the streets of Portland, he takes his final stand on 23rd Avenue, out front of Barista Fine Coffee. All bathrooms are off limits, so the smell of urine and grime is profuse. No matter, he will be treated like a used tissue all the same. Except we acknowledge a used tissue. In complete coherence he yells “Can someone please help, someone help me please!” A victim of crippling medical debt and no family. Maybe in the thicket of drug and alcohol issues. “How would you feel to be looked at as a pile of garbage! You want me to kill myself! That’s exactly what you are trying to do! Nobody deserves to be treated this way!”

And he is right, invisible to the world, however his body still craves compassion and acknowledgment. And we hate him for it. We hate him because “he failed”, because “he got himself in this mess in the first place”. Or is it because we see our potential failure in him? Failure is the only thing worse than hating your job and existence. His choked cries for help, his pleas for death, they scare us. I don’t want to be reminded of my dark times of past, or my dark times to come. I don’t want the thought of killing myself, ever. But here he is, looking straight into my soul, telling me that he will kill himself. What trouble do I have, will I have, that will compare to the treachery this man is facing? I would have killed myself long ago if I were him. If I had the balls.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS THE POINT!” Indeed, slouched up against a garbage can that receives more food that he does, sign in hand reading “HELP, FOOD”. The lady ignoring him at the table across from him has a sticker on his laptop that reads “The future is inclusive.” How about the present? How about you? How about the poor man across form you? You fucking pig. This human no longer can support himself. And you have the audacity to bring up boot straps when the only ones in the man’s reach are in boutique leather shops and on swiftly passing ankles? In the filthy rags he lives, he hasn’t received eye contact in several months at best. His last conversation was with the law, kicking him over a couple curbs at the request of the immediate store owner. Where does he even find water? In the dog bowl out front of the hair salon? Maybe before it seeps into the dirt that it was just poured in from a passing Starbucks cup. The ice could at least stifle the death that is slowly passing through his organs.

What can WE do? Respond to his pleas like birds to a feeder, require constant care? Wait for the government to step in and provide the care needed? That will never happen, there is no incentive the churning profit beast will accept. Maybe we can continue to ignore him till we can no longer hear his pleas for help, till he no longer exists. Till he kills himself in some distant corner, hopefully far away where we will not hear his final desperate cries. He will call to God, or his mother. He will remember his last happy day, decades ago. He will remember the last act of genuine kindness he saw. I’m sure there were not many. So, what can we do? Maybe we can be that little bit of kindness he is pleading for, not because it will save him, but because it is kind. We can’t save the world, but shouldn’t we do our best to do good by it? The world that has treated us so kindly has tormented others. Maybe if we took a minute to understand our hatred of this poor man, we could realize that he’s exactly like us. A poor soul who wants nothing more than love. May the universe show mercy on the poor people of the world, they need it more than us. I grab him my lunch and a pack of edibles, and step over to the poor man.