Deadbeats....

This is a flashback for me of something I wrote but never actually posted. Funny how it speaks to me, almost a year and a half after the event actually took place. Hope it blesses you..
_______________________________________________________________

Today, I went to the council office in Newtown, Birmingham to offer proofs for a reclaim for housing benefit.

The weird thing was that as I approached the desk, I pictured in my minds eye the lady behind the desk. In my daydream, I imagined she was no longer who she was but a girl I knew from school. I said to myself, what if this lady really was my friend from school and as it came to my turn she was the one to serve me? How would my friend from school behave? Would she see us on the same playing field, and this as an opportunity to be able to serve a friend and catch up, or would she look at the situation through different eyes. That since we left school she had made so much more of her life than me, and now I was the one on handouts and she was the one in the position of giving them. It was a funny thought to think, especially as this lady didn't know me from Adam.

When I did get to the desk the lady there obviously wasn't my friend from school. I smiled but she didn't. I was then asked with a laborious tone, 'How can I help you'. Her words said, 'Present your reason for being here', her tone said 'Listen I've been dealing with deadbeats all day, just say what you've gotta say so I can pass you on to someone else and move on to the next customer'. Funny thing was that's actually what she tried to do, to move me on to use the phones, until I brought up someone had sent me here from Handsworth. Then I got an appointment.

What's my point? Sometimes I guess a person comes into a profession with a heart to make a difference, but that zeal and passion gets swallowed up in the thousands who bumble through trying to swing something, the thousands who are not genuinely trying to move on, but just want to get their money. Work then turns into a machine, where a person is trying to get through as many people as possible without seeing the actual people in the process. A heart trying to make change gets swallowed up and often a person fails to see the reason why they got into the career in the first place. The end result is they just get caught up in the same spiral of others. Doing whatever they need to in order to get their money.

When did life become all about living for money? All about a lifeless piece of paper with a dead dignitary on the back of it.

When did it all become about getting one over on another person?
The attitude: I've made more steps than you. I've done more with my life than you have. That makes me better in essence than you, because my value is based on the things I've done with the time I've been given or the places I've got to. The sales and capitalist mentality has crept in so slowly and it seems we've just accepted it. People are based on what they do and where they've got to, rather then who they are. 

Next time you can, if you have the time, talk to the man begging on the roadside. Ask him what his life was like before he ended up on the streets. Ask him what school he went to. What was his favourite subject and what happened to to him to end him up on the street. And realise this is a person who had friends, a home and a family. Not just a tramp.

Maybe some would say, he never had a chance because of how messed up his background was and where he grew up. Maybe he is where he is through his choices. Maybe he was destined to become who he became. But maybe, though there are so many cheats and liars out there, he is like some who genuinely don't fit into the pre-carved box we've made for them....

You never know until you take the time to find out....