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We all have a story

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The recent report of a 45-year-old man in Oklahoma City who claimed he made $60,000 a year panhandling sparked a ton of conversation throughout North America, and some of it was angry.

“Here I am working my tail off for $45,000 a year and this guy is making more than me doing nothing?!” exclaimed one of my friends.

That was the kind of reaction many people had after reading that Shane Warren Speegle told a police officer that he was too lazy to get a real job and would rather risk paying $200/day for a permit to panhandle.

But given a choice between an honest day of work and a day out on the streets, most people would never choose the latter. Why? One of the reasons is that begging is humiliating. Another could be that it’s harder than it looks.

“I was stuck in a strange city once after my wallet was stolen when I was traveling in my twenties,” another friend told me. “I had to ask strangers for money so I could get something to eat and call home. Most people ignored me like I didn’t exist and a few hurled profanities at me and told me to get a job.”

Embarrassed and in tears, she continued to ask for handouts until a nice older couple stopped to help.

“I can’t imagine ever choosing to beg for money,” she said. “Working is way easier than that was.”

So is this Speegle guy for real when he says he’d rather panhandle than work a real job? It’s obviously possible.

Yet if he is telling the truth, I don’t think he’s a fair representative of panhandlers in general. From what I know, most people on the streets are there because they have a mental illness, a crippling addiction or they’ve fallen on desperate times and are unable to get a legitimate job. I’d also guess that most of them aren’t making anywhere close to $60,000 a year.

As human beings we tend to judge based on the appearances of what we see. When we witness what looks to be an able-bodied person asking for money on the streets we may judge them harshly and consider them to be lazy scammers when quite the opposite might be true. We really don’t know their history any more than they know ours.

I’m not saying whether or not we should be giving them money, I’m just suggesting that we don’t paint everyone with the same brush.

We also can’t lose sight of how fortunate we are to be living in North America. Even the homeless of our society have access to running water, food and shelter, unlike millions of our fellow humans who are born into poverty-stricken third-world nations where a glass of clean water isn’t even available.

Everything is relative and compassion is key. It will guide us as individuals to decide who and how we choose to help others.

More columns, blogs, cartoons and videos can be found at LoriWelbourne.com.



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