Poverty is much more than a state of physical being, though that’s what we see, touch, smell. The physicality of poverty is tangible. It’s the concrete and clear, the black-and-white in a situation that’s a cloudy matter of gray. I’ve been there.
I believe poverty is a temporary state. It can be temporary. Many of my best friends don’t even know this about me, but at one time in my young life – I was once homeless. Living on the streets of San Francisco, the railways in Vegas, and the beach called Venice in the late 1980′s, I couldn’t stand the smell of my own feet.
It wasn’t a slow ride to the bottom. It was a cliff. And once I got to that (falling off) point, it was hard to get out. Once you start smelling so bad, it becomes hard to find work. Without work, there’s little means to make for a roof, let alone a bowl of soup. Without food or shelter, hope starts to dwindle.
I got myself there, no doubt. It took others to help get me out.
One rainy night, just west of Pepperdine University, a car pulls beside me as I walk along the PCH. The man offers me a ride. Nice ride, brave man. We chit-chat a bit. He asks me how I got to this state of being. I tell him the truth. Bad choices followed by worse ones. He offers me a couch to sleep on, a break from the weather, a bowl of soup.
The next morning, alone in this man’s Malibu home, I found gifts of hope.
- A $20 bill, tucked inside a book
- Zig Ziglar’s Confessions of a Happy Christian, with a note inside,
- The note read, "Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be, and he will become as he can and should be." – Goethe
- and a chain of events and other helping hands to follow that lifted me back up
It took just one. One to see possibility over poverty without getting to see the results of his actions. The possibility — that together, we can make a difference in one – who might be able to make a difference in many.
I don’t know if I’ve been a difference to many, but I’d like to think I’ve assisted now and again. Sometimes, we don’t get to see the fruit of our labor. I don’t know that man’s name. But he’s one who made a HUGE difference in my life.
One who kicked poverty on it’s hindparts just by believing in another man’s heartparts.
Others First. Hope you don’t think less of me for sharing this story. That man didn’t.
Photo on Flickr by nicdalic
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