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Commit to a stranger? – January 27, 2009
What
if we who have friends and live in stable circumstances spent one hour a
week over coffee with one person who’s more isolated due to homelessness, say,
or chronic mental illness?
My husband thinks that when I ask this question I should start by making a
concession - something like "This may sound preposterous, but
..." Hmm-m, why didn’t I think of that? Does my idea at first glance
(and maybe at last gaze) seem weird to you? To me it just doesn't
seem weird to make a modest commitment to a lonely stranger.
Still, maybe “lonely stranger” sounds sexual (but doesn't everything?). Or
maybe it sounds risky: we meet people roped off into a “special” category
in the public mind only when somebody stuck there gets bad press because
they hurt someone outside the ropes. Or maybe these days everything just
feels overwhelming and we withdraw, like J.
Alfred Prufrock, measuring out our life by teensy
spoonfuls. And like Prufrock, lingering on the
"safe” side of the ropes we may keep wondering, “'Do I dare?' And 'Do
I dare?'”
But forming a carefully limited relationship with a stranger just doesn’t
feel daring to me. And I concede my husband's implied point: I don't seem
to see this from everybody else’s point of view. Maybe it's because I'm too
busy trying to get everybody to see it from mine!
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