Monday, May 24, 2010

People

Man, people are great. I've been reading a book called Loneliness for work--it's written by a neurological researcher who studies the concept of loneliness. The senior organizations I work with come together to plan their outcomes measurement for their programs, and one thing they found is that the 60 - 65 year olds in their programs felt more lonely than people who are older. This might seem contrary to what you would assume since younger seniors tend to be more active and have the ability to get out and socialize more. So, we were a little confounded but had some ideas about why this might be the case. They were measuring how the older adults felt about being lonely, not using some objective measurement like how many hours in a day they spent with other people or how many friends they had who were still living. I went to Chicago in March for the national Aging in America conference and attended a presentation that the author of the Loneliness book did. During the question and answer period I brought up this example of our survey and asked if he had any thoughts on why this could be. After all, the nonprofits don't want any of their seniors to feel lonely or isolated. Dr. Cacioppo's response confirmed our hypothesis--younger seniors are used to working most of their adult lives, used to being around an office full of coworkers and having lives where they knew what was to be expected every day when they woke up. So, the issue is probably two-fold--1. that the seniors' expectation of what "normal" is changes as they adapt to retirement, and 2. that with time people find new activities and a group of friends. One point Dr. Cacioppo rellay emphasizes is the difference between loneliness and depression--people can experience both simultaneously, but loneliness is a physically and chemically different thing.

I think a really interesting point that the book makes is that humans have developed to be social creatures--that tens of thousands of years ago, you couldn't survive very long as a loner. You needed people to go hunting with, people who would help you gather, people who would protect you from enemies and animals. Those people who for some reason avoided others would end up dying younger and were less likely to reproduce. Now, our lives are not so dangerous--people with mental illness and other problems can live their entire lives isolated from other people if they choose. But, we still have an innate need to be around other people, to live in community. Our brains work against us when we start to feel lonely, though. When we are hungry, we have a desire to eat. When we are thirsty, we have a desire to drink. When we are lonely, we naturally become less self-confident and more likely to retreat into ourselves. This natural reaction works against what we really need, and it takes effort to make ourselves not do the easy or more comfortable thing in this situation. It is only by making ourselves be around people and seek out opportunities to be around other people that we can overcome our loneliness.

Anyway, sometimes I need to remind myself how wonderful people are. How good most people are. How much I have to learn from other people. How full of joy and love and God are my fellow humans. So, thanks for being a human in my life :)

PS, I think this project is such a fun idea, and I plan to participate in the One Day On Earth video project http://www.onedayonearth.org/

I found out about it from this really cool human who is a step-father to a little boy with a disability whose blog I read for work http://pacingthepanicroom.blogspot.com/

Monday, May 3, 2010

But What Do You Do?

As a follow up to the article I posted below, I want to talk about what you can do when you see a homeless person in need of help. In the case below, the very obvious thing would have been to call 9-1-1, but in most situations the person is not literally bleeding to death on the sidewalk in front of you.

For several weeks, every morning on my way to work I passed a homeless woman pushing her baby in a shopping cart in my neighborhood. Something was blatantly wrong with the situation--the baby was very young, and the mother could have stayed in an emergency shelter. I passed them by every day for weeks, and the image still fills my heart with guilt. I chose to not do anything for very selfish reasons--fear, discomfort, being too busy, not knowing how to help. All of those things were completely unacceptable--they were selfish, they were about me.

If you're in Houston and you see someone who is homeless and might need help, there is a very simple thing you can do.

SEARCH Homeless Services provides case management and helps people who are homeless access needed services like housing, medical care, mental health care, substance abuse treatment, food, and clothing. They are the experts--I don't know what to do other than hand someone a bag of food and some clean socks, but the social workers at SEARCH are trained to work with people who are experiencing homelessness and help them in a very meaningful way.

They have an Outreach Team that drives around in a bright green van connecting with people who are homeless and letting them know there is a place where they can get help, and transporting them if that is a need.

You can call on someone's behalf by dialing their helpline--713-739-7752

You can also print out these cards and hand them to people you encounter http://www.searchhomeless.org/ResourceCard.pdf

Please don't use "not knowing what to do" as an excuse to not see those who are in plain view.

Modern Day Good Samaritan Story

Dozens Keep Walking As Homeless Hero Bleeds to Death
by Josie Raymond April 26, 2010 03:41 PM (PT) Topics: Violence Against the Homeless

In our quest to raise awareness about homelessness and to push for measures to end it, we don't often write about specific crimes against homeless individuals, because, quite tragically, it would make this blog an overwhelmingly negative sphere without advancing the cause. While we strongly believe that crimes against the homeless should be categorized as hate crimes, we don't want to promote the ignorance and hatred of those who attack people just because they're vulnerable. But today I do feel the need to comment on a story that unfolded in Queens, New York over the weekend. It has less to do with crime, though one was committed, and more to do with how average people treated the homeless victim.

A homeless man named Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax interfered with an attempted robbery by defending a woman on the street. The would-be robber stabbed Tale-Yax and ran. A bleeding Tale-Yax stumbled and fell onto the sidewalk. The New York Post got the tape from a nearby surveillance camera; its time-lapse video is beyond disheartening. Over the course of more than an hour, almost 25 people walked right past Tale-Yax on the sidewalk without doing anything to make sure he was alright. When firefighters arrived an hour and 20 minutes after the stabbing, Tale-Yax, just 31-years-old, was dead.

Even if we give the passersby the benefit of the doubt and assume that they thought Tale-Yax was asleep, the way this small subsection behaved reflects poorly on the human race. Several people stopped and stared at the man bleeding to death on the sidewalk. One man even came out a nearby building, took a picture of Tale-Yax with his cellphone and left. It took two dozen people to walk by before someone called 911. Not even the woman Tale-Yax saved from the robbery called the police. Would you have stopped? Would you have called?

It's a hard story to hear, and not just because you can't help but feel for Tale-Yax and those who loved him. It's even more troubling than that because his unfortunate, and perhaps preventable, death is a microcosm of the way society is treating the swelling homeless population. There's something more dangerous at work here than "out of sight, out of mind" — it's "in sight, out of mind."

http://homelessness.change.org/blog/view/dozens_keep_walking_as_homeless_hero_bleeds_to_death