I drove through a major city on the way to a doctor’s appointment and two blocks away, I saw this “house”. The occupant was holding a cardboard sign and walking between the lanes of traffic asking for money.

Isn’t this everyone’s worst fear? To be out on the street, with no where to lay your head and no way to make an income?

No, obviously, it might not be. I have seen a community of people who panhandle and camp out on the streets seemingly with no intentions to do otherwise. Some people say the homeless are mentally ill and addicted to drugs and they need help.
Unless they decide to do differently, through taking medications for their mental illness or not taking illegal drugs that keep them trapped in the addictive cycle, we are the ones who fear our cities becoming cesspools of human waste and diseases.

Sometimes, I am afraid to drive through these areas with homeless encampments due to fear of the unknown. I don’t know what to expect. I remember offering one guy who was sweating bullets in the sun in the middle of summer a sweet tea I had just bought from McDonald’s.  He said, “Thank you, but I can’t drink that”. Why not? “I only drink alcohol”. He was polite and honest. I couldn’t give him money to perpetuate his disease, so we wished each other a good day at the stoplight. From that time, I didn’t offer anything because my observations are that this is an organized process with individuals walking the lanes of traffic despite discomfort. I believe someone else is organizing these locations and assigning them to “work” the streets through threats of harm or their drug supply. We don’t know what motivates people to do the things they do and probably wouldn’t understand if we did.

For the most part, fear comes at me from different directions. It’s health fears for myself and concerns for my children/grandchildren and their futures. This week, I have been worried about Lily, the 9 year old spaniel with a urinary tract infection. She has been improving since we got her on antibiotics, but she was noticeably upset before we figured it out. In researching the internet, some owners wouldn’t have identified the symptoms as abnormal ( frequent request to go outside to urinate) or been willing to pay for the tests to determine what was wrong ($175).  That adds fear of financial lack and fear of loss of the pet dog to the list.