A Story to be Told

Homelessness and poverty is a tragic, but preventable issue. It honestly breaks my heart to know that the world has all this money and food to support the almost seven billion people in the world. However, all the money is going to useless causes such as warring and weapons and all the food is being thoughtlessly thrown out.

On the Queen and Ossington trip, I saw a lot of homeless people and my heart went out to them. Sometimes their reason is uncontrollable, such as mental illnesses. On the other hand, sometimes these reasons are preventable, such as drug abuse. Nonetheless, I hate seeing how they have to suffer because of others or they have to learn their lesson the hard way. 

However, the one thing that really sticks out to me from the trip is when we stopped at the thrift stores to find our clothes. It felt so dirty once we stepped into the store. There is was mouldy smell and I felt itchy right away. The clothes were everywhere: on racks, on the ground, in piles etc. I felt iffy touching the clothes, but that was our challenge: to step out of our norm and go shopping elsewhere.

I soon took it in that people actually do shop there. When I saw a couple old people, I was not as surprised, because I know that my grandfather likes to go through old stuff that people throw out. On the other hand, when I saw people who looked middle-classed, I was a little baffled as to why they were there. As I neared them to look at the same rack, their stench hit me hard. No offense to them, but it was horrible, probably because they had not showered recently. However, I did not want to judge them. Instead, it made me wonder why they were like that. What story did they have? If this is their style? Or do they not have a choice? Maybe this was a good deal for them, such as when we search for sales at the mall?

I saw this middle-aged lady pushing a cart full of items from the store and I saw another young man go through the children's section. I also saw someone probably in their late teens or early twenties going through the racks. He had the swag of your everyday teen, so I was taken aback when I saw him there and smelt his stench.

All of these people have a story and I wish we had more time to just take in our surroundings. I definitely would have liked to learn something about these people if I was given the time to stick around and observe.  

This experience really opened my eyes and renewed the realization that not all poor people have ragged clothes and no homes. Some look like everyday people who are struggling underneath the surface. Therefore, I learned that you should not judge a book by its cover and every single one of these covers has a story just waiting to be told to someone who has the time to listen.