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Lost Soul With a Moral Compass
Was she confused, or had her moral sense survived life on the streets?
Posted November 23, 2020 Reviewed by Lybi Ma
As we approach another Christmas season, it will be difficult for many people to be optimistic about their lives. Virtually everyone has been touched by some tragedy in 2020. The coronavirus took the lives of many loved ones and left others struggling to regain their health. The wildfires in the West stripped others of their life’s possessions. Hurricanes in the South destroyed homes and left many people destitute. Tornadoes devastated parts of the Midwest. The economic downturn was catastrophic and drove others to food lines and unemployment lines.
I am one of the fortunate ones. I am still doing well in spite of the coronavirus’s threats to people my age. One member of my immediate family did contact Covid-19, but she fought her way back after some touch-and-go weeks. Two other relatives also survived the coronavirus. We have had cancer in our family, but so far I am cancer-free. I am also still employed as a university professor. I live in a good home and have plenty to eat.
I have no complaints. None whatsoever. Perhaps I shouldn’t even be writing this post. However, there is one person I met in the early months of 2020 before the coronavirus drove many of us indoors, who had every reason to complain—and yet she didn’t. I would like to tell you what little I know about her. I do not know how her story started. I do not know how it will end, albeit I can’t imagine it will end well. I only knew her from a few seconds when our lives crossed paths briefly.
I was eating and reading a newspaper at a fast-food restaurant in Riverside, California. My attention was focused on newspaper headlines, which were an array of articles about every aspect of American life. Politics, business, religion—nothing seemed to be immune from whatever side of human nature convinces people that their sole goal in life is to acquire as much as they can during their short stay on this small planet. The most depressing headlines addressed corruption and greed at the highest levels of our country.
I looked up from the newspaper as I sensed some movement to my right and realized a homeless woman was approaching my table. I had seen her earlier outside the restaurant, hobbling along a sidewalk. Either one of her legs was shorter than the other, or she had suffered some injury to her hip that made walking extremely difficult and probably very painful. She wore a garment stained with sweat and dirt. Her dark-brown hair was matted and clumped, and she was panting from the exertion of walking. Her open mouth revealed only four or five teeth.
“Do you have two dollars so I can get something to eat?” she asked, looking at me with glazed, weary eyes.
I quickly checked my wallet and realized I had a one-dollar bill, several twenties, and no five- or ten-dollar bills. She was such a pathetic sight that I decided to give her a twenty-dollar bill and wish her “Good luck!”
She studied the bill briefly and handed it back to me. “I only need two dollars,” she insisted emphatically. “What would I do with this?”
I must have stared at her with stunned disbelief for several seconds because she repeated that she only “needed two dollars.” I quickly handed her the one-dollar bill from my wallet and emptied my coin purse in her brown, callused palm. She thanked me and slowly shuffled over to the counter, ordered the smallest item on the menu, and limped outside to eat it. When she was done, she deposited her trash in a garbage can and hobbled away.
I could not get over the fact that she had turned down my offer of a twenty-dollar bill because she “only needed two dollars.”
Was she so confused by her life on the streets that she didn’t know its true value? Or had she kept her moral compass and sense of dignity intact, and she had decided she would only accept the two dollars she asked for. Nothing more.
I am still puzzled by what happened. I almost felt like I had been visited by a messenger who had stepped out of the biblical past for some unfathomable reason.
I glanced down at the newspaper headlines I had been reading and realized once again that many of our nation’s wealthiest citizens seemed to have an insatiable need to own and hoard everything for themselves. Yet, she only wanted the two dollars she needed to get her next meal—nothing more.
Some very powerful people in our country seemed to have lost their moral compasses. Maybe this lost soul, who seemed destined to live and die on the streets, could teach all of us a lesson.
