Quote:
Originally Posted by garysanfran
I really applaud the kind hearted action. I came away thinking SailnAway is a good person. But his actions do nothing to solve the problem. That homeless man is probably starving again today, unless someone else took him to Market Basket, every day. An old adage holds true today pertaining to this problem... "Give a starving man a fish and he'll be hungry again tomorrow. Teach a man how to fish, he'll never be hungry again".
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We all can and should act on two levels to help solve problems like this: our small personal level in our daily lives, interacting with individuals we encounter, and on the political level through activism and careful voting.
The point of my story was not to show that I'm a good person. It was to convey the suffering of people with mental illness, and
the power of one person to change the suffering of one other person for one day. If this were done every day by thousands of people, imagine the impact. In fact, thousands of people do acts of altruism every day. Everyone can choose to do this, rather that enjoying their own good fortune complacently. Life offers you these opportunities every single day. Seriously, ask yourself why you're here in this life. My belief is that we're here in large part to lessen the hardship around us.
Schizophrenia is a tough nut to crack, but there are other kinds of mental illness that do respond to simple kindness from a stranger, like depression and anxiety. And the young man I met shows that even people with severe mental illness can be lucid enough to be grateful for your compassion. Try it!