08 Mar The Way Of The Way 256

Many years back, on a wintery evening, when my son, Max, was maybe 8, we walked passed some homeless men setting up their cardboard sleeping surfaces under an overhang at the foot of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church on 5th Avenue and 55th Street in New York City. Seeing their presumably difficult lives with few choices, I commented: “When you grow up, if you don’t work hard, this is a type of prison where you can wind up.” To which Max replied: “Maybe they don’t mind.”

Simple, yet profound. Perhaps I was a prisoner of a bourgeois mindset and the homeless men were simply living from one day to the next, making the best of their circumstances, without thinking about bourgeois-prized creature comforts and societal roles the mind makes many crave.