How did we get here?

                                  How did we get here?

Have you ever asked yourself “how did I get here” I know I certainly have at times. Whether it was something as simple as zoning out while going somewhere or more of an in depth question about how I ended up putting myself in a bad circumstance, this is a question that has come up in my life. When I look at the question “how did we get to the current homeless crisis in the United States?” Through talking with people that have worked in the shelters I came up with a culmination of multiple factors. In my opinion the primary driver is a capitalistic society that only values people for their ability to generate a profit for someone else. In a capitalistic society in order to be employable you have to serve a role that generates more value than what your employer is willing to pay you. That is how the employer makes money. This creates a circumstance where many employers seek to outsource work to countries with cheaper labor or they seek to automate and replace human labor with machines. These actions are the most profitable for the business owner and in a capitalistic society Profit is King. As a result of placing profit before people many of us are told from a young age that our dreams are unrealistic. We are told to give up and go “get a real job, with benefits and a 401K”. This is largely nonsense that is espoused by the owners of corporations to convince you to work for them. I believe that everyone is born with a gift, a light they are meant to shine into the world. This light however is often tarnished because it is not perceived as valuable by society, or by family or by peers. This inevitably leads to self-doubt as our gifts are stomped on by others. They may even mean well, they assuredly are trying to justify giving up their own dream and projecting it onto you. As humans we want to make connections with other humans. We want to be valued and appreciated so we begin to change ourselves. We begin to project what we believe is important to society, to our family, to our peers. This internal conflict can lead many down the path of drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of not being able to be ourselves. Drugs and alcohol are physcially addicting and chronic use ends up not only hurting the life of the user but also the lives of those who care about the user. Addiction is one of the 5 main reasons why people end up on the street. Now they may not all follow the path I laid out above. There are many other reasons people turn to drugs and alcohol like experiencing loss or trauma but the point remains it is where many people end up. The second most frequent reason why people end up on the streets is due to mental health issues. Now mental health issues can be brought on by a multitude of factors and as with addiction it is difficult for those impacted to seek help. Especially due to how our medical system is set up. We are very much a band-aid culture when it comes to medicine. Doctors are taught in medical school to identify and treat symptoms rather than identify and treat root causes. This again goes back to the capitalisic nature of our society. Should we teach doctors how to identify and treat patients root causes people would eventually learn how to better take care of themselves. This would lead to less demand for doctors and less demand for medicine. Big Pharma would never allow that, so instead they have their reps pitch drugs to disguise symptoms and enable people to continue whatever destructive behavior brought on the symptoms to begin with. This again leads back to addiction as not only do the pharma companies want to ensure doctors prescribe meds the medicine itself is physically addicting. When you tell someone all of their problems and pain will go away just by popping a pill it is very tempting, no matter how strong you are. Mental health is a little trickier as the causes are not always as clear as physical ailments. I experienced it firsthand during my marriage when doctors prescribed random anti-depressants for my ex-wife that caused her to have drastic mood swings, weight gain and self harming behavior. Mental health requires access to people who are skiled and trained to help. It requires education of what to look out for and teaching for how to handle stress in a healthy way rather than rely on medicine. Anyone can struggle with mental health when dealing with the stresses of their everyday lives so think about how stressful it must be live on the street, to not know where your next meal is coming from. Think of the toll that this takes on the mind. People need to be secure before they can begin to work through and process the stress. The third main reason why people end up on the street, which I honestly hadn’t even thought of prior to beginning to consistently volunteer at a shelter last year, is because of age. You may be thinking, what do you mean age? There are around 400,000 kids in foster care in the United States. I didn’t think of what happens to them after they age out of foster care. Think about how difficult it is to provide for yourself at 18 even when you grow up in a healthy household with parents that have a stable income. Now imagine not growing up in a stable household, not having family that loves and looks out for you. I can easily see why so many young people end up on the street. The fourth reason is because of court mandated payments that they don’t have the means to pay. The fifth reason is they were impacted by crime. While some people may fall outside of the circumstances this covers a large percentage of homeless people. My goal in founding Cherry Willow Apparel is to help the homeless people rediscover the beauty within themselves. To help them find a way to shine their light on the world. It has a lot to do with my favorite philosophy call Ikigai. Ikigai is the intersection of “what you are good at” “what you enjoy doing” “what the world needs” and “what you can get paid for”. From all of the research I have done it is the worthiest pursuit in a capitalistic society. This is why I founded Cherry Willow Apparel. I am good at relating to people and telling their stories. I enjoy meeting new people and helping them. I got the idea of an apparel brand from my years experience in selling apparel and then meeting some people who had successfully launched their own. My hope is in that interviewing the homeless participants I am able to uncover “what they are good at” and “what they enjoy doing” in an effort to get them connected to someone who needs that work and is willing to pay them to give them an opportunity to complete it. As people we all want to help each other but we often don’t know how. My goal is to make it as easy as possible to help in whatever way you can. By interacting with the stories on social media you’re helping to spread the message and potentially could be the reason why a connection is made. The world is smaller than we think and we are more connected than we know.