THE BLANKET MAN - 2015 UPDATE

I have written about a Man who I call the Blanket Man twice before (in 2011 and 2013) but I haven’t written anything more about him for a while.

I saw him again yesterday. He was north of where I usually expect to see him. He was dressed in a jacket and had a scarf with several colours on it. His hair was very, very dirty. He seemed to look the way he has, or actually even a little better than usual, because some times he looks very grubby.

Sometimes he has a blanket or sleeping bag draped over his shoulders, is without socks, has on loose shoes without laces. On many occasions he generally looks very dirty and disheveled.

Recently he appears angry or raging, especially in the past year. At other times, seeing him, he is talking to himself and is very belligerent. A friend thinks he lives in a house nearby and says he is likely to stand on the street daring cars to hit him.

I continue to be dismayed and baffled by this person. His appearance seems to indicate that there are some occasions when he seems to pull himself together a bit more than other times. I think various store keepers help him out.

In the past, I wondered if and how he might survive. I have to think that he is on, or needs some sort of medication. He continues, however, to move about on his own power. In general he seems to be someone who needed a bath/shower and cleanup. Yesterday he looked in good spirits and was walking south at a good pace.

As I have often felt in the past, I wish I knew what I might do for him and people like him but I truly don’t know if any direct contact would be of any use or help.

He is not alone in living around my area and, at least 2 other people have lived on the street corner area for most days for, at least the last few years.

My imperfect solution is to donate to a service organization that either provides food or shelter, or both. This does not relieve my feeling of helplessness to someone I think must be unfortunate or having difficulties.

However, I feel that perhaps I can feel that at least someone more qualified than I am with professional training might help this Man or someone else I do not know how to help. 

I wish I could know my donations somehow help him or others who are perhaps like him in some small way.*





 *APPEARANCES CAN BE DECEIVING - 2 on January 22, 2016

BEFORE STRESS RULED OUR LIVES

Once upon a time, in what might seem like Ancient History to non Boomers, people somehow managed to live without concentrating upon reducing their stress. They didn’t add to it either because their/our days were not thought of as a 24/7 continuum.

The stress industry had not exploded around us to make us aware that we were tense and upset and wound up from (among other things) a work day that never ended. Our jobs ended for the day and we went home.

When we went home, ‘after work’ we went home to the other part of our lives, the part that mattered most to us, our homes and families. Rarely would the work part of our life intrude upon the home part of our lives. We and everyone else around us lived like this, so none of the above was unusual.

I remember I was working for a stock broker when the ‘Big Bang’ was about to happen. We were told that business would be running on a 24 hour day and be worldwide in scope. Similarly we heard a lot about a ‘paperless world’ which was and is, coming soon.

To prepare for this ‘new’ world, corporations were going to become leaner, meaner and more efficient. This usually meant that soon fewer people would be doing the work than ever before.

A lot of industries merged, many kinds of companies joined together with many other (previous incompatible) industries. For example risk averse long term thinking banks merged with short term thinking stock brokers. Generally everyone wanted a piece of everyone else’s business.

A lot of these strange multi-industry conglomerations didn’t work out for obvious reasons and such strange bedfellows, as food processing and clothing manufacturing and car parts, often eventually separated back into more logical associations with more those producing or dealing with areas with similar products and services.

What was this time before an industry was devoted to stress and even children suddenly requiring medication to function (Ritalin etc.)? How ever did we manage to stay sane, without others telling us how to fix our lives?

I’d say it actually goes back to a mutual understanding that everyone had that there was a time for all things in life and that we were not trying to merge everything together in one big mixture that came at us nonstop.

When you don’t need two incomes to just keep a roof over your head and constant activity for yourself and your children. Today 60% of all American women work and over 70% of mothers are working. Meanwhile, often many must have other people raising their children.

Ferrying your charges from activity to activity after work extends the day into evening until eventually everyone collapses exhausted into bed.

It was probably in 1980 that Esquire magazine ran an article on how to be poor on $100,000 a year. When all of the obligations and clubs and costs and memberships were calculated, very little was left. Now similar calculations are done for millions of dollars. The amounts are higher and, even allowing for inflation, harder for many more people to ever think of being debt free. Besides there is always someone above us we would like to reach. Perhaps if we could just do that, we would finally be happy.

I think we were happier. We certainly had fewer people telling us what we wanted or needed in life. That may be why.

Some of us believe that space and time may be today’s ultimate luxuries. They are not, however, for sale. With a little effort, however, we might change our own lives for the better by consciously making room in our lives to enjoy the world around us and to take back some of our time for ourselves to enjoy and marvel at what life must have been like before stress ruled our lives.  

WHAT YOU SEE MAY BE WHAT YOU GET

Some time ago I cited the Chantal Kreviazuk song ‘Time’ to illustrate someone who has thought about and wondered about where time has gone.

More recently someone has figured out that we have 28,000 days in an average life. I wonder whether others who lived shorter lives in previous generations fooled around with figuring out the number of days in their lives. Perhaps computers have made the job easy enough that we can indulge and gratify our need for such information. 

Life, when you think about it, doesn’t come with guarantees or assurances or money-back offers. Instead one day we wake up to consciousness and change our lives and those of our parents forever.

Some of us are, or become over time, pretty happy to be alive. Others somehow live out their lives with most of us realizing they aren’t very happy at all.

For some time now I have been convinced that the late Ingrid Bergman had a point when she said, Happiness is good health and a short memory.

The longer you hold onto things, particularly things that did not and will not make you happier about your life, the less likely you are to be happy about them, and probably many other things you would probably normally have enjoyed about your life.

Some people say, life is what you make it. I think that whatever you see or feel about your life, when you decide to view it as a positive rather than a negative, you are perhaps closer to making it better than it otherwise would be.

Where you sit may tell you where you stand on an issue. In a similar way how you interpret an experience may make if feel it is either a good one or a bad one for you. This, might at least be something you can actually effect in your life.