Why?

When I tell people what I do on Friday nights and Saturday mornings, they always are surprised. They always ask “why do you go out and do that?” “What’s the point?” 

What do I accomplish? Sometimes I don’t know. I find myself going out because I enjoy their company. I find a certain peace in my heart and my mind. Out in the woods, there is a certain isolation and tranquility. 

Will I ever understand what it means to be homeless? I hope that my life doesn’t take me in that direction, but I hope to get a glimpse of their lives, their perspectives, and the live lessons they have to offer. I take each experience as something to grow from and learn from. That isn’t to say that my work is an experiment or some sort of school project. Rather, my goal is to give “them” a voice, an arena, an outlet to share their lives and their message. We all have so much to learn from each other, and the homeless population is no different. They see the world through their experiences, just as we do, yet the world looks back at them in a very different way. 

I find myself seeing the world in new ways, and wanting to experience it through a different perspective. I know when I was little I wanted to be a police officer. I thought “defending the peace” and “upholding the law” was the greatest thing an individual could do. I guess numerous police visits to my house when I was little (none for a good reason) didn’t hurt my intrigue. I remember sitting in the sherifs office in the middle of the night while numerous officers would come in and talk to me and give me things to play with. It was during a time in my life that I would rather forget, but still, it impacted me in some way. 

Still, later in life I found myself wanting to live out in the wilderness away from civilization. That idea rooted from the stark reality that I wouldn’t be able to play baseball much longer (due to physical injuries). It was my life for so long, and loosing it caught me off guard. Well that and a really great hiking trip through North and South Carolina. There was something calming and very peaceful about being out in the wilderness. There was a loneliness and solitude that I found very comforting. 

In the end it’s not about how I feel. I oddly feel very comfortable out in the woods with the homeless. I feel a sense of community and love that I don’t normally see. Yet, while I am comfortable being out there, I feel a great amount of discomfort in the idea that people must live that way. The social issues that cause people to live in such situations is very troubling. 

I am lucky to be touched by so many amazing lives. Their stories, their constant hope, and their resilience inspires and amazes me. My only hope is that I can find the means to spread their voice and their stories so that others can see in them what I have come to learn and love.

~ by amitkarr on July 26, 2008.