In the thick smog of the roads in Southern India, a familiar silhouette is that of a beggar gambling with the kindness of those journeying on that road. Some choose to give, others choose to ignore, while others choose to look, do nothing, and blame the government. And then there are others whose main concern is how the existence of these beggars affects the aesthetics of the road – so they say confidently while littering.

Actually, there is yet another category: one of my teachers let me know with absolute conviction that I should not give money to “those people” because they are actually very wealthy because of how much society enables them – apparently, one day she came across a beggar making a significant deposit of bundles of cash at the bank.

So, the idea is that being a beggar is so profitable that people continue to do it as a lucrative profession.

Sounds a bit familiar doesn’t it? A bit like how the existence of Waimanako “creates” homelessness because we provide food.

So, the idea here is that being homeless is so sustainable that people choose to live on the streets. The idea is further elaborated to also include a discourse on addiction, and violence, and how it all fits in with those suffering from homelessness.

If hearing this causes you anger at the injustice contained in those words, I will not make any requests for you to inhibit it. These words are not just.

Having said that, we must be cautious to not add further hate, division, and discord into the discourses at play by directing it towards those who have those harmful opinions. One path to this is to seek to understand those who refuse to be open to understanding those they judge and condemn.

But why must the burden to understand lie on us rather than on those people who wish to be so repulsive to us through their words? It is THEY who are being unjust after all. Why must WE do the heavy-lifting? THEY are wrong. Those are very good points. However, the issue I wish to address is not for us to prove ourselves right or to exert something over the hatred – I am not suggesting we “one-up” them. I am not saying “make them look stupid”. I am saying that I value the compassion YOU possess. I treasure it and I love it too much to see it being chipped away or being expended in participating in that deluge of opinions lacking in foundation and moral.

I wish to bring to attention two little factors that I hope provide a means to think about it.

One’s Outlook on suffering:

A very important element to compassion is being able to look at another person’s suffering, and not feel so overwhelmed by it to the extent that one needs to turn that suffering into something else. You, reader, have this superpower.

Some of you reading this have faced homelessness previously: this lived experience is confirmation to you that homelessness is a state that a person may be in, and it is not the whole person. Having been homeless, you know of how one can slip into it, and how the factors in play can be deep rooted systemic issues, and trauma whose gears were set forth generations ago.

With great shame I admit that there was a time in my life when I was convinced that homelessness was exclusively the result of personal decisions. Why? If I tell myself if it is because of personal responsibility, I have power over it. I can make sure that I don’t “make myself homeless”. This unfortunately, has the highly undesirable side-effect of also looking at existing homelessness as being caused due to a person’s poor decisions.

Then why did my teacher nonsensically state that beggars were wealthy? If she tells herself that beggars do what they do by choice, and that they are actually living life well, she can sleep better at night knowing that abject poverty is a myth. To fully realise and take in the enormous suffering that comes with that kind of poverty would have been soul-crushing for those who do not know how to include the idea of destitution into their belief systems.

There are those of you who have suffered with addiction – you know that addiction isn’t a “lifestyle choice”. It’s not something that you do because it is “fun”. And yet we have many people who will say it’s simply a matter of having better self-control….

To look at suffering and to not feel completely defeated by it, one needs to be able to see hope, alternative ways of being, a way forward, or at least a way to support the person to make that suffering a bit more bearable. Human beings will do their absolute best to prevent their spirit from shattering – even if it requires looking at someone’s suffering as either a preferable lifestyle choice or a result of personal failures. This is a result of empathy without compassion – which does nothing other than fill us with the same suffering we see.

We must still remain careful to not fall into the trap of blaming someone for not being compassionate enough. One’s outlook on suffering is heavily influenced by trauma.

We have all probably met people who strongly believe that the only way to be a valuable member of society is to provide economic growth. So in other words, homeless people are undesirable members of society, while Elon Musk is the absolute pinnacle of humanity. It is easy to think of an almost endless number of traumatic incidents that lead to such an opinion soaked in self-loathing. How little love must a human have received as a child to forget their worth, and to instead tie it to their income tax deductions?

Sometimes the ability to be compassionate itself is an honour that not all of us receive, which leads us to the second factor.

The means to help:

My city had an animal welfare organisation called The Blue Cross of India. While I was there longingly looking at all the puppies, I saw three young boys, about eight years old, bring an injured stray dog (India is full of stray dogs!) there so it can get some medical assistance.

What do you think would have been the outcome if this had happened in a city without an animal welfare service? I can assure you that the dog needed to see a vet – this was not something for three little boys to fix with a plaster. They would have had to either take on the suffering and the helplessness, or ignore the dog, block those thoughts out, and move on with their day. Neither of which they wanted to do.

The animal welfare organisation provided a way for eight-year olds to save an animal’s life. How profound is that? They didn’t need to be vets, or need to fill in a million forms, or pay money (which they definitely would not have had), but they had the opportunity to save an animal, and they took that opportunity.

When I’m on the phone these days and I hear someone say they can’t afford food, I don’t have to feel shattered by their situation. I get to invite them to our cafe for some kai. When a worried mum calls us in tears worried about her son, I can say “I can see him in the next hour. Does he like hot chocolate?”. When someone reaches out to us desperate for support having tried so many other avenues, I have an incredible team ready, on standby, waiting eagerly, to do a phone call to connect, explore, and support.

I get to work with a community of literal life savers, waiting to see the bat-signal, waiting to be called to arms, to provide their time for the greater community.

You are an endless source of hope that fuels the compassion that many in this community possess, which allows people to come together as donors of money, donors of time, donors of food, artisans, tradespeople, counsellors, coaches, teachers, mentors, and so much more to all work together to save lives, without being defeated by the suffering that we are all very much aware of.

Now, I have a question for you. Imagine there were a free local service that allows people to access safe and stable housing, budgeting advice, therapeutic care, rehabilitation, pastoral care, career coaching, medical care, free training in a trade, steps towards a university degree if preferred, all this from a community of genuinely loving people.

That person who felt homelessness is a personal choice, or my teacher who thought beggars are in reality wealthy people: if the above service existed, do you think they would still stand by their opinion, or do you think they would consider asking a person living on the streets whether they’d like to be driven to that place where they would be wrapped up in a blanket of support and be offered a new life?