Homeless, not Hopeless
Submitted By: Danny Garcia
Date Submitted: 6/26/2007
I tell this story to a lot of people, mainly because it was the catalyst of my change into a life of kindness.
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So a few years ago, when I was like 13 or 14, I decided to go jogging during a rainy summer day. It was always my favorite activity because the streets were so peaceful when it rained, and in the summer it wasn't very cold at all. So I'm running, and I see this grown man with sweat clothes on that are clearly a few sizes too small, no umbrella, and he's picking cans out of a bush. And as he finds on, he smiles and puts it in his shopping cart. And I run past him thinking "How sad. I wish there were someway to help him." and I begin to have that argument we all have in ourselves. Where are thoughts aren't in sync with our body. "Wait; I could give him my umbrella." - "But I need my umbrella" - "No I don't; I have a hoodie under it. I won't get wet at all." - "But mom would kill me." - "It's just an umbrella. I'll take the fall." - "But what're you gonna say?" - "It's gonna be embarrassing turning around to run back and give him an umbrella." - "What if he's a nut?" - "What if he doesn't speak English?"
And as I'm thinking all these conflicting thoughts, I'm still running. Farther and farther from him. So I ultimately decide that all of his suffering doesn't equal to the little suffering I'll have without a silly umbrella. So I run back, and give him the umbrella with this really embarrassed face (I was never the social kind of kid) and say "You need this more than I do." and to my surprise, he took it with this giant smile on his face saying "Really?" and I'm like "Y-Yeah. Take it." and he takes it repeating "Thank you! Thank you!! God bless you" over and over. And I walked away feeling good. I turn around one last minute and see him smiling a lot more than he previously was, even though he's still back to picking cans from bushes. "It was just an umbrella." I thought, not realizing that it was the kindness that made him happy, and not the material possession. It was that feeling that he wasn't alone in the world.
A few weeks later I'm running on a bright sunny day, and pass by the same man sitting down resting, with the same exact clothes, and the same exact shopping cart full of cans. The only difference was my umbrella right in the corner, looking like he cherished it. It was so clean and neatly placed, contrasting against the rusted shopping cart and cans.
It didn't matter that I couldn't give the guy a house and a job; I only did what little I was able to; and it made a whole lot of suffering seem to go away. And that's really all it takes to heal this messed up world; is to get rid of our pride and give up our own happiness just to make someone else even a tiny bit happier.