THE HOMELESS: 39 QUESTIONS FOR YOUR REFLECTION
by Kindness
by Kindness
1. When you see a homeless person, do you look
the other way and keep on walking?
2. Do you avoid making eye contact?
3. Is there a sudden selective deafness when
you “hear”, or don’t, their requests for help?
4. If you do ignore a homeless person’s
request for help, just how quickly does the incident evaporate from your mind?
5. Seconds? Minutes? Hours?
6. What is your honest opinion of these people
who are teetering on the very edges of our society?
7. Do they feel that, possibly, they deserve
their predicament?
8. Could it be that they are lazy?
9. If so, should they simply get off their
lazy rear-ends and look for a decent job?
10. Is it easy to get a job where you live?
11. Do you think it is any easier to get a
job, where you live, if you’re homeless?
12. Have you considered that there are
homeless people who do have regular jobs?
13. Does your suspicion that some of these
people might be pulling a con and actually making good money by pretending to
be homeless and begging, stop you from helping any of them?
14. Do you feel a sense of disgust or detest
the way they smell, look, sound or behave?
15. Do you have any personal experience of
homelessness?
16. Could you handle being homeless day after
day and keep things together?
17. Would you smell better, behave better or
beg less, than a homeless person does, if you did not have a home to go to for
the next four weeks?
18. Are the homeless asking for money because,
in the main, they want to buy drugs and/or alcohol?
19. If so, is that why you won’t help them?
20. Can you see that if you were homeless you
might also want to take something to numb your feelings about the situation?
21. Do you think the homeless are completely
beyond our ability to help?
22. Is it that they should pull themselves up
by their own bootstraps?
23. Would you prefer them to be ‘relocated’
away from your line of sight so that they can also be put out of your mind?
24. What are your thoughts on the concept of
homelessness being a crime?
25. Do you see homeless people and hear
yourself muttering internal sound bites like, “there but
for the grace of God go I”?
26. Are you worried that their craziness,
anger or diseases are contagious?
27. Were the homeless born homeless, addicted
or mentally ill?
28. How close are you right now to being
homeless?
29. How many missed salary payments would it
take?
30. How many family members or friends would
let you stay at their house?
31. How long would they let you stay?
32. Are you sure about that?
33. What would a bad divorce, redundancy or
severe mental illness do to you?
34. Do you have a clear idea of just how far
any one of us can fall and how quickly it can happen?
35. Are you immune from losing everything that
you care about?
36. What is your response to these people who
have less than you or nothing at all?
37. What is your response to a man, or woman,
begging for food?
38. Do you help them, smile, offer something,
anything, buy them food, stay there for a moment and engage in a conversation?
39. Are you somehow better than the homeless
or just better off?
