I grew up 20 miles north of New York City. My dad works in the federal district of Manhattan, the island which is arguably the frantic, beating heart of the metropolitan colossus I call home. My family and I may not have lived within the city itself, but we certainly spent plenty of time there over the years. Some of my fondest family memories come from trips downtown with my mom or dad.
Of course, if you spend any amount of time in any major city, you will encounter the homeless. It’s a guaranteed inevitability. One day, you’ll be walking along the street at a brisk pace when something will catch your attention—or rather, someone. You’ll glance down and recoil in the same millisecond as you realize that you nearly stepped on the muted, ragged form of someone sleeping, huddled along the side of the street on a motley mattress of soiled fabric and cardboard.
That’s only if you’re lucky, though. Most of the time, you won’t run into these people when they’re sleeping. They’re a lot easier to ignore with a clearer conscience when they’re asleep, when they’re not looking at you. When they’re not asking for help. It’s a singular experience, the first time that someone asks you for money on the street.
I remember when it first happened to me, a stocky ten year-old in glasses who tried to hand a crumpled wad of three dollars to a tattered, bearded man sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, before his dad grabbed his shoulder and yanked him along, hard. A minute later, my dad told me never to do that again because you could never trust people in that kind of situation. He said that there was no way to know how they got into that level of trouble and no way to know if they deserved help. His logic was that he would prefer not to give money that would potentially support the addiction that had led to homelessness in the first place.
I can’t quite blame my dad for thinking that way; it was just how he was raised. He grew up in Queens and spent his entire life in the city, meaning that he’d had way more exposure to the homeless than I likely ever will. I don’t fault him for growing the tough, brusque shell that every true New Yorker needs to survive. He’d probably seen plenty of people get taken in by so-called “beggars” looking to scam gullible tourists out of a quick buck. It doesn’t mean that I agreed with him back then, though. I still don’t.
Because I also remember the second time a homeless person asked me for money. This time, I was with my mom. She grew up north of the city, just like me. A tall guy wrapped in a battered overcoat shuffled over to us and stretched his hand out into the bitter New York cold toward us, asking if we had anything to spare. Without hesitating, she handed him several of the singles that she always kept in her purse for any situation. He thanked her profusely, wished God’s blessings on her, and shuffled on, hands once again buried in the ratty wool folds of his coat. After he walked away, my mom looked in my eyes and told me something that she would repeat to me often over the years: “We have no way of knowing how he’ll use that money, but at the very least, we showed kindness. That’s what truly matters.”
To this day, I have never forgotten that truth. In the grand scheme of my life, I would much rather look back and see that I was too generous or too charitable. That sounds like a much better revelation than the weight of knowing that I could have given so much more. I don’t encourage going bankrupt for the good of others, and I never will. We all still need to live and provide for ourselves and our loved ones. But if we do have something to spare, we have an obligation to help the needy. Someone has to—otherwise, who will?