What you can do when you can’t do anything
Our town, like so many others these days, is in the midst of some very tough times. This has been an especially hard week. We’ve been doing what we can to support the food banks and the Adopt-a-Family. We’ve donated socks and winter coats and we’ve got plans for Janu-wear-y (more later) but it’s not enough.
Some days it feels as if it’s never enough as we bear the burdens of the unhoused and drug poisonings and expulsions. Those feel like problems that are just too big for our small group.
But here’s the thing. The thing we can do when there’s nothing else we can do. We talk to a neighbour, or we’re at the hairdresser, or we’re just passing the time of day in the grocery store and someone refers to “those awful people.” Maybe they speak of some way they deserve punishment or that they’re feeling afraid to go downtown because they’re there.
Well, here’s your call to action. You must remind your neighbour that those people are also our neighbours who’ve fallen on hard times and need our help, not our scorn. No one chooses to live on the street and they would be elsewhere if they could. They’re trying to support each other as best they can. And even if they are frightening they are someone’s child, or sister, or cousin you’ve lost track of.
If you can give to the folks at Hope House or Friend of Downtown Neighbours you can be grateful that someone is helping. If you get a chance to change the conversation so the political leaders lean a different way, please do so.
When there is nothing else you can do, that is what you can do. You can change the conversation to one that is more compassionate. And if yours is the only kind word spoken make sure it doesn’t go unsaid.
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