Heart for the Homeless

The last picture I added via LifeCast from my phone. Maybe you liked it, maybe you didn't. I did. None of that is the point, however.

The picture is taken on the Knoxville Downtown Trolley, which takes me from my home to campus (and back) each and every day (sometimes two, three times each day). The most interesting thing about my ride each day is not the historic sites I pass, the horizon reflected in the Sunsphere, or the sounds and comments made in busy traffic. It's my fellow riders.

Downtown Knoxville has a particularly stark division of wealth, like most inner-cities going under reconstruction. Old factories and warehouses are being converted into expensive lofts and condos by the multitude, bringing in the wealthy. The poor, however, who have always "littered the streets" (to quote verbatim one of my fellow upper-class passengers) have never left - they have no where else to go. There are these indiginous poor, and the sojourning wealthy. There is no middle class here.

Don't get me wrong. This isn't an attack on the homeless. It's just the opposite, actually. Stay with me.

Prior to the industrial revolution, all cities were based around their downtown area. It's where all the jobs were, so thus where all the commerce was. People lived where they worked. Think Downtown St. Louis, homies - Soulard. It was busy. It was noisy. It was bustling. And it was beautiful.

Then came the advent of modern, cheap transportation. And with it, the yearning to be alone. People (who could afford it) moved out of the cities, where it was quiet, quaint. They created their very own sub-cities: sub-divisions. They would commute into the inner-city to do their work among the normal people, but would live on the outskirts of town in order to get away. A little vacation everyday from 5pm-9am. It was the beginning of suburbia.

Following "the big move", capitalism got smart. Or so they say. Commerce wanted to be where the people are (think Ariel, the Little Mermaid - only suburbs and money, not land and attractive humans). It started with small convenience shops, then grocers, then strip malls, then shopping centers, then megamalls, then huge corporations. They all packed up and moved shop to the suburbs - where the people with the money lived (now). Someone (some company) would buy their old buildings and move their business to the heart of the city, right? Wrong.

What remains is the crusty sea-shell that once represented the sprawling sea-life that was the inner city; now dead and washed-up. And the homeless, without anyway out, have remained.

I think about this everyday on my ride to and from school. I'm not always so quick to defend the homeless as an entity - I know many of them have chosen that lifestyle and actually are better off having everything provided for them so that they don't have to lift a finger - just a metal cup to ask for change. I do know there are some, however - some that never would have chosen this lifestyle if presented to them. They're just graduates of the school of hard knocks, you could say. But they'll never defend themselves. They'll simply continue riding that red trolley to the Strip, and back to Downtown Knoxville. Back. And forth. Because there's nothing better to do.

Sometimes I think about their potential. Do they have it? Some of them, I'm sure. What would they be had they made (or not made) that one decision? A brilliant scientist? A professional musician? A struggling psychology doctoral student?

How many of them are me, bar one small choice?

One day, I'll get the courage to have a real conversation with them. To sit down, treat them to Starbucks, and ask the hows, whys, and whats. But, for now, I continue on my Orange Route, passing out cordial, surface conversations about the weather, Big Orange football, or the drugs kids are doing these days.

And somehow, I'll continue to feel guilty about the good choices I've made.
Or the luck I've fallen into.

Regardless, I am blessed. And I am thankful.

"It's getting cool out there. Prolly gonna rain."
"Phil Fulmer has GOT to make a change. Our secondary is amazing, but the offense is struggling."
"Yeah, bongs are back in style man. Trouble. I don't understand why kids would want to do that stuff either."
"How did you lose your last job?"
"Where's your family? Did they abandon you?"
"What's something you can do right now to make the future look better for you?"