Brighten Your Day

After work one day, I decided to grab a pizza for dinner at the mall. As I was heading home, I saw a girl sitting against a pillar in the mall, her hair covered over her face and her body was frail, frailer than a senior citizen. I decided to walk past her because that's what we do in society - we walk past people we don't know, especially homeless people. It's easier that way when we don't know their names. They're just another nameless face in the crowd. But something made me go back. I learned her name, why she begs for money and lives on the streets. Her parents died years ago and she suffers from Lupus. She has no job, is unable to work because of her disability and lives wherever she can find a space to crawl into. She's 22 years old. She had stayed in shelters in the past, but was abused. She stayed in the mall to keep warm on cold days, but even the mall she said wasn't safe because security always tosses out people like her.

I'm one of those people who used to believe there's a system of supports to help people. Ideally, I would like to believe that. It makes it easier for me to sleep at night not having to think about "those" people. After all, I have my own worries to think about let alone worry about someone else. I used to think maybe one day I'll help "them". Maybe one day I'll win the lottery. Maybe one day the system will help "them". But when I met that girl, I thought to myself, what if no one ever helps her? What if this so called perfect system that I believe in doesn't even know or care she exists? What if I don't win the lottery to be able to help people like her? What if she's not going to be around long enough to see that "one day"?

I didn't really think about what happened next. I shared my dinner with her and gave her all the money I could get ahold of. When security came, I talked them out of helping her instead of throwing her out like they usually do. Now I'm sharing this story with you the reader out there. Don't wait for one day to come before you help someone. Now is that one day. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next year. A hundred years from now when all the material things you have worked so hard for have gone to dust and those things - the house, the car, the job, the stress become the custodian of some other poor chap who covets those very same things - ask yourself if any of it really matters?

It's the legacy you leave behind that truly matters and that lasting legacy begins when you think outside of yourself and help another human being. Because that's what we all are - not "us" and "them" but humans. If you can do something to ease someone else's suffering, don't wait for that distant one day. Be the one day. Be it now.