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“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”~Viktor Frankl
A friend, retired, keeps busy—pickleball, book clubs, t’ai chi—and stays aware and concerned about current events. But the other day she blurted that she envies our friends who had children, because their lives had a guaranteed purpose, and now they have an automatic reason to want to live as long as possible. Kids, and now grandchildren: guaranteed pride and delight.
She said if she ever, God forbid, receives a cancer diagnosis, she is not sure she would undergo chemo. Her life does not feel urgent and necessary to her. She keeps busy because it seems healthier than sitting home watching TV, but there are plenty of days she would rather do just that. If she lived with someone, she thinks, she might have more motivation. As it is, something feels…missing. She is insufficiently relevant.
“I know what you mean,” I say, which is half true. “I’ve been grateful for every minute of my life, even the grief and angst, but I don’t know that I would push back hard either, if I had a terminal diagnosis.” Without children, you are more conscious of endings than beginnings. Your life is less tethered. And unless you are doing lifesaving work, it is hard to feel necessary, once you break the lockstep of alarm, dress up, go to work, and come home too tired to think about much except the next day’s work.
I decide that I will take my friend out for breakfast soon—someplace elegant, with exquisite pastry—to cheer her up.
The next morning, I am at the Field of Hope, the encampment just north of downtown for St. Louisans who do not have homes. I want to know what it was like for people to survive an EF-3 tornado with only polyester tent fabric between them and that wind. Kevin Roberts, the encampment’s unofficial mayor, relives that harrowing afternoon for me—and we keep talking long after.
He tells me about a guy who showed up after his apartment building caught on fire, asking if he could stay. “We don’t turn around no one, especially in the middle of the night. ‘Find yourself a spot,’ we’ll say, and the next day, we talk and see what their plans are, if they have the ID they’ll need to get on the housing list.” Even with ID, it can be a long wait. “You call and find out you’re number 900,” he says, “and they say, ‘We will call you.’ And if you miss that call, you have to start all over again.” He grins ruefully. “We are the modern gypsies.”
People who live at the encampment work with search and rescue, provide a safe haven for women in danger of domestic violence, and stay alert for anyone under age. “As hard as it is for grownups, you can imagine how it is for kids,” Roberts says. “Some think they have the ability to be out here. A kid comes, we’ll watch him, see how he acts, how he moves. And we listen. Any hint that he’s under age, our antennae go up.”
This strikes me as a far more effective approach than what you see from most social-service bureaucracies. Roberts is more practical, too. He knows the people who come need advice on how to stay safe, especially at night, “and how to communicate with a lot of different people. And if you see a big ol’ raccoon, you gotta know whether to panic.” You have to get through violent attacks, illnesses, and natural disasters, too. “Up here, we don’t say ‘I,’ we say ‘we,’” he says. “Can’t do this by yourself.”
A woman walks past, tottering on high heels and wearing a moth-eaten, beribboned hat. She flourishes a plate of pastry, served with coffee by a nonprofit called In Excelsis. “This,” she announces grandly, “is extravagant!” She does not need cheering up, I catch myself thinking.
Roberts has pitched his tent here for almost two years, growing more and more involved. “We are nowhere near finished,” he says. “We’ve still got things we need to do to help not just us but the future. Homelessness is never going to stop. We want to be able to educate people and show them where the resources are and the safe places they can go until they can get back on their feet. We want to get this encampment running smooth and our core members go and open up another encampment, ’cause this is not enough. This is just like a sprinkle.”
They are planning a garden, he tells me, brightening. “Maybe raise chickens, too. Give people something to do instead of just sitting around. When you have something to do, and a purpose why you are doing it, helping somebody else while you are helping yourself, you will be happy. It gives you structure and something to take care of. Instead of being stuck in a square, you can see beyond it.”
He has no idea how he has just schooled me. It happens again when I talk to Severin Pelekara, one of the volunteers with In Excelsis. What brings most people here, I want to know. How often is it addiction, which I always hear is the main cause?
“I don’t want to jump all the way to addiction,” he says firmly. “People get it in the wrong order and say addiction leads to homelessness. But alcohol might just be a way to escape homelessness, a safe place away from reality. Homelessness can make people lose the very sense of who they are. There is a switch that is flipped: from living to surviving.”
The switch Roberts is trying to flip back. The switch I forgot to factor in when I swallowed, without thinking, the usual lists of causes. A clueless set of assumptions that did their job, letting me avoid think about how easy it is to be in your own right mind and still have your financial stability knocked out from under you.
It is purpose enough, I decide, to just keep learning what I have gotten wrong about the world.
Read more by Jeannette Cooperman here.
