Homeless people are everywhere—on street corners, in parks, in parking lots, in front of stores. It pains me to admit that it did not really affect me until about a year ago, give or take. It seems the number of unsheltered people rises and is rising at an alarming rate each year. I just now learned that 25% of the nation’s homeless population lives in California. Hundreds of thousands of people are forced to survive with neither security nor comfort, neither attention nor compassion from those who are supposed to protect and look after their people. Every day, they go forgotten, unloved, pushed to the side, marginalized. I feel such guilt confessing my previous ignorance and insensitivity regarding homelessness, the same sort of guilt that suffocates me every time my mom and I pretend to ignore someone sitting helplessly on a curb with a cardboard sign asking for money.

About two months ago, my mom reported to me on the way home from school that she saw a man playing an accordion, his young son by his side. The words were empty and lifeless and limp. They meant nothing to a tired, sleep-deprived student who was constantly pondering her, what seemed to be, a chewing-gum existence that had been stretched, sucked-on, blown-up, popped, and kneaded to the point of blandness, whose flavor had changed countless times, for better or worse, throughout the years. Every Friday, after school, my mom and I go grocery shopping, which typically includes going to Trader Joe’s. One day, I saw the accordion man my mom had talked about. We were still in the car, so my mom could whisper to me, “I thought I had seen him working in that restaurant.” She pointed to The Halal Guys, which was two or three stores to the right of Trader Joe’s. That broke my heart. At first, I observed him from a distance. I saw such suffering in his eyes that my mom’s words could definitely not describe. They were weary and baggy. He was unshaven, and his whole face frowned, expressing a tiredness that I could not begin to fathom. His son was probably three (I have never been good at predicting people’s ages). He was in good spirits and bounced around the path while doodling in a notebook. Naturally, while walking the walk of guilt past this man, I started imagining his story. I thought of him as someone who would stand guard all night while his son slept. I saw him in my mind playing his usual sorrowful tune for hours and hours until the sun came up. I pictured him locking himself and his son in a bathroom so that they could have shelter, an after-effect of watching The Pursuit of Happyness. How and why was it so easy to go from having a job to joining the “others” of California—the hundreds of thousands of people who are forced to survive with neither security nor comfort, neither attention nor compassion from those who are supposed to protect and look after their people? Those who, every day, go forgotten, unloved, pushed to the side, marginalized? I figured that day that when letters to state representatives fail, there are but two things left to do: help those as best as one can, and utilize the hidden storyteller inside each and every one of us. The second time I saw him, I did the former. It took a good ten minutes for my mom and I to come to a compromise about how much money I could give him. I had seven one-dollar bills and two twenty-dollar bills. She had some coins. I wanted to give him the seven dollars, knowing that my mom would pass out if she found out I gave twenty dollars to a complete “stranger”. Even using the word “stranger” in my head gave me chest pains. This was not a stranger. I had known him in the times I felt insignificant, and in the times I had gotten to know people who had felt like outsiders. When my mom stopped wincing, I resolved to give four dollars and an unopened snack bar. I dropped the money in the accordion box and placed the bar in the hand of the child. I felt neither pride nor happiness despite having performed a good deed. All I could feel was anger. It quickly subsided and sadness took its place. When we went home, I thought about all the times in history that marginalization led to disaster, and I thought about how many little disasters must happen daily as a result of similar marginalization. All of us have felt unimportant in some point in our lives, and we have the moral obligation through our shared human suffering to uplift people from theirs, however we can. Again, physical, emotional, and spiritual help are always welcome. And as for the second option I mentioned earlier…his tune continues to haunt my thoughts. It grieves and worries, it carries on painfully, it perseveres through the night, it is a harbinger of dawn. Such is the man with the accordion, and such is his story.