Hopelessness Kills

It started suddenly pouring as the cafe began to close early due to short staffing. I wanted to time my departure so to avoid the rain on my way out but that was no longer an option, as one by one the staff began to place the chairs upside down on the tables — a most polite "please, leave." It wasn't a big deal though. I hate being caught unprepared so I always carry an umbrella, amongst other only periodically useful tools, in my waterproof backpack.

At Starbucks, as I settled down into my seat, having walked only half a block to carry on with my work as if there had been no disruption at all, I did my classic scouting of the room. I have a habit to always take note of everyone and everything before I take seat anywhere, usually with my back to the fewest amount of people. What I missed in my surveying of the room, was a man standing outside, beside a trolley. A few books laid scattered on the ground, some decorative scrap paper, a water bottle next to a rolled up blanket, and lots of rain. I watched, from inside of Starbucks, an unending stream of water crash and spill over onto every single item this man owned. The man, his face mostly covered with the hood of his hat, stood motionless, arms down, with his head drooping. He stood outside, amidst the rainstorm, while I sat inside sheltered in an ambient Starbucks — though from my vantage he was silent, his hopelessness was loud.

Just the other day I had read about broken heart syndrome. There is a more technical word for this, named after a Japanese trap to catch octopus, the name of which I forget, but the colloquial term does well to convey the message. By now, I think many of us know that the human heart can indeed face a heart attack under situations of extreme stress such as a breakup. The rates of this specific circumstance are higher in women than in men, but instances are reported across all lines. More interesting to me was a study done on aggressive mice. When these mice were left unattended in a pool of water, some survived for a shockingly long time, but many drowned quickly. Electrical measurements were taken to record heart activity. The expectation was that under such stress, the mice's fight or flight — their sympathetic nervous system — would engage and raise their heart rate by diverting all blood flow to the most essential organs. Heart activity precisely at time of death by drowning should be high, yet the exact opposite happened. It was found that these mice died with an abnormally low heart rate, indicative instead of parasympathetic nervous system activation — rest and digest mode. The study's finding eluded reason until hopelessness was accounted for. From that study, and similar subsequent ones, we now know that hopelessness can kill. As the mice are dropped in the pool, at first their heart rate increases under the stress to survive, but as they realize their actions are worthless endeavors, their systems begin to slow down, their heart rate goes down, and the mice begin to accept fate as they experience a Sisyphean struggle to survive. Hopelessness can kill.

I could not help but think back to this as I watched the man watch his belongings waste away by nature's spurious flooding. Water, the very element that gave life, was now so clearly taking away the hope of a man with already such little left.

There was absolutely no reason he could not have been inside this Starbucks with me. I often enjoy getting work done in Starbucks because of the company policy of seeing the establishment as a community center, where patrons need not purchase anything to enjoy the space. This comfort of knowing I won't need to purchase anything to enjoy the space is what often brings me inside, yet here was a man, not more than ten feet away from the door, losing all his belongings precisely because he did not have a sheltered space. To me, this irony was somehow more deafening than the silent hopelessness of his expression.

Homelessness is a crisis, and it is a crisis that need not exist. It is a public policy issue, and societal concern. Solutions exist and we need to recognize the inhumanity of sitting idly as other men and women struggle to not drown.

I ran to this man before he slowly pulled his cart away into the rain, accepting his losses. It turned out, he had just enough to usually have a roof over his head. All the belongings I saw get wet were in fact supplies he gives out to other homeless individuals. He refused to accept my money. It is often the ones with the least, who give the most.

Hopelessness kills — we must not let it kill our humanity too. I encourage everyone to think of Terry, and make more room for some humanity in their hearts. It is the requisite to progress. Small stories are always happening around you — it is on us to take notice, to reflect, to learn, and to carry the stories of others with us as we seek to carve our own place in the world.