Imagine for a minute a life in which everyone was given the privilege, before birth, to choose among the various options available. Surely everyone would choose to have a beautiful and strong body, an intelligent brain, parents who love them, no debilitating diseases. Some might choose to have rich parents in hopes that their physical needs as well as wants would be met.
Wouldn’t you think that all of us would be born well-equipped with the necessities for a healthy productive life and our standards of beauty would definitely be worthy of Hollywood? Why do you suppose so many people fall short in the attributes that make success most likely? Is Almighty God punishing some of us? Why some of us but not all of us? Surely the infant born into poverty and despair can’t have earned such punishment. Now imagine for a minute, a life in which each person was given the option to choose among the many options for a good life. Wouldn’t we all select the options that assured us a life of individual growth and warm relationships both familial and community?
The truth is that none of us has earned the right to either the opportunity filled or the fraught lives we were gifted. If you lost that most important lottery? So sorry. You get what you get and there are no do-overs.
Do you think those born with less agile brains should be punished for it?
How about those with less agile bodies? Those who are not beautiful?
How about those who were so stomped in their early childhoods that they have never believed that there was any hope for them of a path to success?
Every religion teaches that we are each responsible for the poor among us. What does that mean?
I’ll suggest that it means more than donating a spare $50 or $100 to a local charity. It means taking responsibility for what happens to everyone in your community. Most of us live incredibly privileged lives. Those of you reading this are likely living in the top 1% of luxury ever available in human existence. We have closets full of clothes, big screen TVs, separate rooms for sleeping, cooking and sitting plus indoor kitchens and bathrooms with running hot water.
We have a habit of judging our success by comparison to those among us who are most successful. Indeed, there are people living in mansions with every convenience imaginable. And there are neighbors among us living in the dark ages. I suggest that we look at how very lucky those of us are who have homes and the necessities of life. Don’t envy the rich. Appreciate your own good fortune.
What to do? We all seek safety. Those of us in comfortable houses as well as those without. We also are extremely protective of our ability to make our own choices, personal agency, it’s called. You know the feeling, “Give me liberty or give me death.” We hear from many people that merely having homeless people in their sight makes them feel unsafe. We hear from our homeless friends that they are being targeted for abuse purely because they are without homes. That is very unsafe.
As a community, we need to keep trying to find a way to keep all of us safe. The Pallet shelters are a start but they don’t solve the problem. There are quite a few organizations here trying to provide more safety to those who are least safe and thus most annoying to many of us. Please think about how you might donate and volunteer for one of the nonprofits that are making an impact in building a safer community. Safe Space Winter Shelter, Torres Shelter, North State Shelter Team, The Jesus Center, Catholic Ladies, and more … the list is long but resources are slim.
When our homeless are in adequate spaces, they’ll be safe, not in the streets or parks or all the nooks or crannies around town. When we all look out for each other we will all feel and be safer and be members of a stronger community.
Nancy Wirtz has been a resident of Butte County since 1996 and of Chico since the Camp Fire. She believes we’re all doing the best we know how and some of us need more support than others.
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