In his wonderful Post Jungian writings, James Hillman talks about a patient who is depressed after she runs into a begging homeless person on the street. Firstly, she experienced the dilemma about whether to give money to the man. What if it was a drug addict or alcoholic and he just wanted money to make himself sicker? That's fucked up. And she knew that she couldn't give him enough money to really help him. That felt fucked up. By the time the woman had had all these thoughts, she had walked past the homeless man and was fully in her head. She later went to a therapist and talked about her feelings.
In her therapists office, they spoke about her parents and her grandparents and her childhood. She still felt lousy. When she got to Hillman, he suggested that she might get out of her head and do something about homelessness. She did and she felt better. Hum. Was that a brilliant shrink or some age old wisdom that most people know? Helping someone else is one of the finest steps toward curing depression.
With all the depressed people in our country, you'd think we would have the most helping society ever. With all the Christians in our culture, would think we would all be tripping over ourselves helping the least fortunate. Instead, we are extremely busy making trouble all over the world. (Listen to Jeremy Scahill on how the US laid the foundation this summer for the Kenya massacre. Makes your blood run cold.) I think we need to work on the weird idea once floated in Philadelphia about "Brotherly Love." I expect that we could return to our much earlier ideal of what the USA was set up to do best, and it would be good medicine for all of us.
So, about my preaching. The other evening, I was sitting on my veranda . It was cold and rainy, but the sunset was breaking through the clouds. I was trying to decide what to have for dinner. I had many choices. My friend Greeley was inside the house talking on the phone. A very wet, very bedraggled woman called to me from the sidewalk asking if I had a phone she might use to call her mother. I said, "Sure." She was very frail, shaved head, missing some front teeth, dressed in a filthy hoodie, new flip flops, maybe 40, looking 60. She was chatting as she came to sit next to me.
I handed her my phone. She started saying her mother was in Mexico but the number was San Diego and talking about how she had always had problems with her mom but now things were great. Her mother answered and they had a very unsatisfying conversation from my viewpoint. Neither knew where they were, as they made plans to see each other soon. She hung up and seemed happy.
She said she had had a free dinner and in her plastic bag she had a new sleeping bag, but no tent. I offered to help her find a shelter for the night. She went into some long story about how she can't stay in places because .....I gave her a pair of sox, a bottle of lemonade, I offered her a hat. She didn't like it. Greeley came out and found a hat she liked. She never stopped talking. She was very sweet, but the talking didn't make sense. She started to leave. The rain started to pour down. Greeley gave her some money. I felt like shit.
Even if I could have found her a place to sleep, she had clearly had bad experiences and got frightened when I made the suggestion. Friends say she sounded like a meth person with all that jabbering. I have no way of knowing, but her sweetness doesn't exactly jive with my impression of meth users. Whatever it was, she was a deeply troubled, very lost, cold, human being.
I'm glad I met her. I have met her in people who have food and comforts and nice places to live. Whether her suffering comes from addictions or mental illness or both, she is a deeply suffering human. We have a big problem here in Oregon with homeless folks. But I think the bigger problem is with mental health and addictions. And my problem is that it makes me sad and putting bandages on a broken artery doesn't seem to help. That being said, I will continue with my little acts of kindness. I figure now that every cup of coffee I have at my local coffee shop cost me about $8 because I always have to give to the people begging outside. I am not going to stop thinking a little money and a kind word won't sometimes help a person. I read about miracles all the time. They often can be initiated by the smallest thing.
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