In Santa Monica yesterday. Aren't these the coolest trees? Why do you suppose they grow to the ground like that, their trunks twisted and warped that way? They're all over the park.
So too are these, homeless people sleeping under thin blankets on the cold ground still wet from the rain the night before. People don't even seem to see them. I felt hideously guilty - I would have given him money for the picture but had none with me. I wasn't even wearing gloves I could offer him.
This is very close to the Third Street Promenade, a blocks long collection of very trendy shops and restaurants. Thousands of tourists and people with money and bags full of expensive crap walk past here all day and you can smell the food from the nearby restaurants. It seems impossible that there can be so much food and money so close and these people still there, hungry and cold, watching the people with their bags and their hands full of hot dogs and cokes or maybe instead trying not to watch them.
Here I am, trying to figure out how to get those last couple of presents I need (need?) to buy, obsessing that I can't buy more for the kids or the in-laws, and there are people freezing to death out there and no one does anything. Not even me - every year, I swear that THIS Xmas, instead of buying presents for the kids, we are going to use that money instead to buy blankets and gloves to give to homeless people. And every year, I don't do it. Instead, I make up little bags full of juice boxes and energy bars, etc and hand those out to the ones I come across. This year, I can't afford to even do that, but why not? Because I have spent an obscene amount of money on presents.
I want to preach, but if I can't even stand by my own convictions, how can I yell at anyone else for not living up to my expectations of what giving should mean? And what lesson am I teaching my kids?
