Homelessness: A Short Story

Have you ever wondered how people could go out and help homeless people? I thought that it was such a foreign concept, the idea of going into the slums and helping men whose problems were on a different scale of ours. For this reason, when my church offered to me the option to do exactly that, I was uncertain. I ended up going anyways, because my friends were going, my parents wanted me to go, and I was bored of sitting at home. About a week later, I arrived at Washington D.C., and went to the area where homeless people hung around. It was a parking lot behind a homeless shelter, and they usually hang around there at 5 PM because the shelter is on a first-come first-serve basis, and it opens at 6 PM. It was such an intimidating place; I was being strangled from the looks we were getting, on …show more content…
But what was astonishing to me, was how respectful, how polite, how friendly he was. When he thanked us for the food we had given him, he had a certain gleam in his eyes. And that look of his eyes was something that can not be purchased, forged, or traded for. If everyone in the world was able to look at his eyes at that exact moment, we would have no need of weapons or harsh words. After the great conversation he gifted to me, I went on a 1 hour car ride back to my team’s staying place. And during this ride I was able to reflect on the unique experience I just had. While I was there, I felt a certain type of joy that I had never felt in my life before. Of course, I had felt joy in my life, but this was not the type of joy that I got from meeting my old friends, or receiving high test grades, or going home on the last day of school. This new type of joy that I felt instantly made me realize how people could go out into the world and extend their hand to the homeless, to the needy, to