“James helps others.”

I prefer to think of it as I help people, not others.

Last week at a supper several homeless individuals were discussing something to do with homelessness. At one point in the discussion Jerry needed to make a point and called me over.

He gestured and asked “What do you see?” I turned, looked at the cityscape and asked him what he meant. He repeated “What do you see?” Hmmm??? After a few more exchanges it turned out the part of the cityscape he was asking me what I saw was the people.

While my answer lacked elegance it did make clear that when I looked at them I saw a group of individual people, many of whom I knew.

I did not see undeserving bums, cons, thieves, people who choose to be addicts or any other of the popular labels applied to this group.

Jerry seemed happy because whatever the discussion they were having was, the point he was making was the difference between looking at them and applying a label and looking and seeing them as individual people

Do some of them have addictions? Most certainly, however seeing them or thinking of them just as addicts brings with it preconceptions and attitudes that get in the way of the help they need as opposed to the help you think/believe they need or should get.

Mr. X is a person with a problem(s) and that problem happens to be his addiction. Is addiction a behaviour that is unwise? Yes. Does addiction give rise to behaviours that are a royal pain in the ass to deal with? Yes. Is that an excuse not to help this individual? No.

Helping or not helping is not about them it is about us. Our choice to help or not to help reflects the nature of each of us as individuals and of our society.

When you do not want to do something you can always find an excuse to not do it. You apply labels such as addicts or worthless or lazy bums or talk about not deserving.

The society everyone seems to decry results from the decisions and actions of the members of that society. And one of the fundamental foundation stones of that society is how we treat the most vulnerable and weak of our society.

Given the way society and government currently treats “them” it should not surprise anyone how our society behaves and functions.

As you sow, so shall you reap.

They are people and as such we should help – whether we want to or not – because this is how an intelligent, mature species behaves.

Which is why I say I help people not I help others; others carries the suggestion of us versus others when we need to respect that we all are people.

Still I like “I may never be able to sit having a coffee on the sidewalk in the same way again.”

Another one down, a few million Canadians left to illumine.