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by Dr. Andrew Mecca
One of the mysteries of the human animal is that we show more compassion and mercy toward pets than we do toward each other. Take a walk around the streets of San Francisco.
Natives are used to the sight, but tourists and visitors look shocked when they encounter homeless forms of humanity sprawled out in various postures of despair. Pedestrians literally stumble over lifeless bodies sleeping inside cardboard packing boxes on downtown pavement, cold from the fog and stinking of human waste.
The few feeble hands that have the strength to stretch outward in a begging position are left with nothing as passers-by rush past, trying very hard not to notice the disasters sprawled beneath them. It's a grim picture, this battlefield of human wreckage splayed against the backdrop of what should be the most healthy, giving, and upbeat city in the universe.
Imagine the outcry that would be heard if these were small animals, household pets, wounded and scarred, moaning for food, shelter, hope. First of all, it wouldn't happen. Not in America. Think of the words -- Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals -- so soothing and compassionate, so kind and protective.
Is there any agency or organization that promotes such gentleness and empathy toward humans? Not really. Fittingly enough, the few homeless people in the streets fortunate enough to receive a helping hand do so because they usually hang a sign around the neck of a scrawny kitten or puppy. Only then will someone feel a tug at their heart strong enough to cough up a few coins ... ostensibly for pet food.
This is one of the truly vexing problems facing modern-day America -- the individualistic sense of "Me First" and self-aggrandizement that, actually and ironically, flies in the face of the spirit of the Statue of Liberty. Give me your tired and hungry, your poor and oppressed, indeed.
But, even if it were fictional, what would San Francisco look like if people transferred their pet-loving ways to other people? You'd have a bustling town of active intervention, concerned citizens assertively stepping in to arrest and alter the disease of others.
You'd have aggressive folks loudly expressing outrage and indignation about the carnage in the streets. You'd have people physically guiding these lost souls to food lines at churches, shelters at community organizations. You'd have the true spirit of America rekindling hope where there was desperation.
How could this begin to happen? How do you break through the thick wall of denial and hopelessness that surrounds seemingly unsolvable issues like homelessness and poverty? You do it by humanizing -- in the finest, highest sense of the word -- the problems at hand. You do it by viewing each separate case of despair and destruction as someone special, as a person who was once an infant cradled with care in his mother's arms. And you do it by reaching out a hand of hope where before there was only a path to death.
People simply must know the help that is available to them before they can learn to ask for it. Restoration of human dignity begins with a hot meal and a clean place to live, yes, but it also begins with the proper information. Leading someone to hope and a new life is what mentoring is all about.
Mentoring is the courage of someone in a stable position in life, extending promise and opportunity to someone less fortunate.
In AA, it's called one drunk helping another drunk not to drink. In real life, it's called social responsibility. And, in the nuts and bolts of personal recovery, it's called mentoring --fostering a caring, ongoing and stabilizing influence in another person's life.
We don't blink or flinch when a precious little animal bats its eyes for a free meal. In our country, neglect of animals is simply not tolerated. The really tough challenge is to summon the same kind of spontaneity of feeling when a fellow human being pleads with us for a new life.
The brilliance of mentoring is that it offers a positive choice for a troubled citizen to finally tap into himself to find out exactly how to turn his life around toward hope and health.
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