Since I started working at the Urban Center, every day, in an effort to gather thoughts or procrastinate, I gaze out my floor-to-ceiling window and notice a young man with his arm gently wrapped in the crook of an elderly woman’s elbow. The first time I saw it, my mind wandered to thinking that perhaps this man is some good samaritan, just happening to come across this elderly lady with a scarf on her head, protecting her silver hair, taking the time to help her across the street. But each day, as I notice the unseemly pair walking down Girard Avenue, it incites a thought process that is perhaps far broader than the Biblically-based theory I had before. My guess is that I will never know their story, but my postulating leads me to the refreshing belief that these Good Samaritans do exist, but that perhaps their presence and relations with others aren’t quite as random as I would’ve thought.
I recently applied to three graduate schools (which is a headache in and of itself), all of which demanded we address a social problem and discuss how we, as social workers, intend to perpetuate change and alleviate the issue. You would think this would be simple... I did take a Social Problems course in college and was surrounded by one problem after another during my time at Saint Francis Inn. But for some reason, I had a hard time settling with one specific issue. You see, after my time at the Inn, I saw so many different problems about which I became impassioned, such as crime, child and domestic abuse, addiction, homelessness, chronic poverty, that I couldn’t pick just one to focus on. I had stories for each that I felt needed to be told.
I was determined to find a common thread among these issues- to see a greater issue that affected those to whom we ministered. Spending some real time thinking about these issues, I continued my work at the Inn, serving meals, going on pickups, working at Saint Benedict’s Thrift Store. Somehow, God’s intervention yet again set things in motion when I greeted a regular on the street. As usual, I asked, “Arnetta, how are you today?” Her placid response of “My son died yesterday,” without any sign of emotion, alarmed me. A tear was not shed, not a trace of anger in her voice, absolutely no semblance of grief crossed her demeanor. My usual reaction upon receiving news as such is a hug, gently and compassionately consoling the grieving, but that seemed out of place here.
When I got home that night and was reflecting on the day’s events, Arnetta’s story kept popping into my mind. I found it hard to believe that a parent wasn’t deeply mourning the loss of her son, that it seemed as simple as if she had said, “I took the bus to get here this morning.” As I let that marinate for a couple days, I began to notice how there were very few people who were excited by such events.
It escalated in me this desire to get to the heart of it, to really figure out what it was that caused such ambivalence and complacency when it came to their relationships. And then BAM! There it was! It appeared to me that there was no intrinsic value placed on human life, either their own or on others’. For so many of our guests, their lives have been full of loss from a very young age, either due to drugs or crime or poor health. They grew up with death as an ordinary occurrence. Those “regular” or “ordinary” social problems suddenly made more sense; people don’t recognize their own value so they use drugs, they prostitute themselves, and they don’t recognize the value that resides in others so they commit crimes against other people, they abuse others.
This naive revelation has given me fuel for the social work fire that was lit within me years ago. I suddenly saw it as my mission to help others see their own value and then to see the value in others. So now you’re asking what this has to do with the young man with the old woman walking down the street... good question.
Here’s the kicker- perhaps the best way to revolutionize the world is to start small. Taking the time to, one-by-one, help others see their own worth, is contagious. I see this in the young man and elderly woman outside my window. It takes the small-scale personal relationships, the individual attention given to everyone, not just those who can afford to pay for it, and our own paradigm shift into thinking that since we’re all walking this same Earth, perhaps we should all be walking side-by-side. The next thing you know (or at least the ideologue in me hopes), we’ll see more people walking arm-in-elbow, less and less use for the soup kitchens and social service agencies that exist, and a positive movement towards social equality.
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