The Invisible String - Emergency Relief

I like to think I have survived things through my strong sense of humour. Sure, it is not to everyone's taste but neither is pineapple on pizza so that does not make it wrong. When it comes time to accept help and look for ways to get through or get by, I like to think I am pretty resourceful. We all like to think so. It is the survival of the fittest, after all - that great Darwinian denial that we need to be our best to be wanted and to be kept. Keeping afloat, in all honesty, is something we have to do.

Drowning can be found and done and fallen into, where very little real warning. The soup kitchen of our offices, of our home stretch, our street and our schools is a steaming place with more than enough for everyone. Everyone. How little do we know of everyone? How often do we fill up our own cup from the large pot and how many pots are there available if we drop our own while topping up for others? Of the things we need to sustain us, how many can we sacrifice to keep the seesaw from toppling over? Breadwinning is not all it is cracked up to be. After all, if we are women, we know that the health and hearth of our home requires a kill and catch your own mentality and, if we are not women, our worth is still tied up to keeping everyone going and to bringing home the proverbial bacon.

Making money and making ends meet is not something all of us have learned easily. Meaning that there should always be enough to get by, and enough to share. If a problem shared is a problem halved, then why do have so much trouble finding a way to message that we need a share, to share, and to be saved. Saving your own skin and not losing face, not losing faith. We can do it but we cannot do it as easily as we might think - when we hypothesize or imagine what that might look like. What does it look like? Is it desperate, a cold cry, or a war cry? Where do we look and what stones do we turn up to find whatever is left that will sustain us for long enough, until we are better, out of the storm or our broken selves have been unbroken.

To break into a house? To take what is not really ours from someone else's home? The charity that has begun at home is much easier for the giver, much more so than for the taker. Is it a loan? And then what of the never a lender nor borrower being? Could you show up and take an appointment if it meant admitting that you needed emergency relief? What constitutes said emergency and would you negotiate the terms of that relief? Would you be wise in knowing which staples to take and which to save and store, and what would you refuse to ask for, or take?

Take the time to really consider this. In the last twelve to eighteen months, the sheer stretch that has resulted from the pandemic we had to have has really meant many of us got used to going without. Those of us who did not have to go without, stockpiled and stored and hoarded resources. When asked why the dunny paper dash became such a Melbourne thing, how many of us sniggered while, deep down, stirring our own inner cauldron of contempt and resentment? Who does not have a square to spare? Why is one bum more important than another, and what is a bum?

Many many years ago I worked at a beachside convenience store that sat between Elwood and Brighton in Melbourne. There were a few celebrity clients and there was the odd lady working for the upmarket brothel nearby and everyone else in between. One fisherman came by close to Christmas day and leafed through a box of odds and sods such as mini trees, decorations, and perhaps there was tinsel in there. Looked like the Grinch had vomited in the box, to be honest. He looked wistful. In the end, he took home a loaf of bread and nothing at all Christmassy. I felt very forlorn and very lucky at that moment. I was only young and I could not understand what had lead him to be the fisherman he was, or really fathom how much just getting up each day must have been a challenge to him...

Are you a bum if you need to ask for help? If your car becomes your home or if your home can only be kept if you get rid of your car, and what if your car is your key to working and your working is the key to keeping your home? Harrowing questions, to be sure. And surely asked by far more of us, and fewer of us closer to answering the questions without risking our identity and our very place in the world that once was our shelter.

For some gentle and tenacious folk, there is another life lived helping out when people come asking for help. I spent almost a year for at least one day a week down at BANsic in Heidelberg with a wonderful team and a beautiful woman called Kate who was in charge of the volunteers. She had a way with folk and an amazingly intuitive style of speaking with those who came down to the centre. Many of them had histories and so many of them she knew by name. While she had limits on what was funded and what could be done, she was always ever so respectful and warm. I am sure she could have worked anywhere else.

When COVID struck the little oldies who were running the Foodbank that Kate so often referred people to was left without volunteers completely, and in the space of a week, Kate lobbied to have the service moved into BANsic. There was suddenly a marketplace, a deep freeze was sourced and the stock in the storage needed sorting. Frozen but fresh meals were handed out to passers-by, someone else would stop in and say the sardines might work for their cat, and others would need a script filled for a mental health issue. There were vouchers for fuel and myki tickets and, without fail, there were biscuits and bottomless cups of coffee for the troupes who rallied around to help Kate do this wonderful work.

There is a remarkable exchange that happens when one of us is in need, and another of us helps without judgement, nor pity and we indeed forget that on both sides of that equation either party could just as easily be on the other side so easily. It is arbitrary and it is humbling to be either. Would you know what to say to a person choosing between food and fuel? How many of you, apparently living comfortably, are closer to living pay to pay? Can we ignore any of it anymore with the disruptions that have become so normal in the age of the pandemic?

When we work, and shop, and play, and connect, we generally feel like we are living our life. We have a choice. We have an identity. There is a way of living and life lived, our way. When we lose our way, these fruits fall apart as do we. There are children swept along, and partners and our others. All of us. In the little rowboat, sinking... not drowning, waving? The dog jumps in and nearly tips us. Someone else reaches for the oar, but we are not sure if that will be our undoing. To come undone, such a brave and raw prospect. Could you lend a hand and be the invisible string?

Do you dig in for a dollar when you see someone outside a supermarket with a sign? Would you know what to do if you came across someone stealing next to you in the shops? Have you any idea if some of your neighbours need more than sugar? If they do, would you understand that this may well be none of their fault or any of your business but that you have a job to do. You have to know that what is yours, is theirs. That what you protect and harvest was never meant to go rotten and unused and, even if you are not the slightest bit Christian, that Jesus is watching and weeping. We have a collective conscience that gets pricked every time some marketing prick makes it, but do we actually have a plan to give to help others live?

It might be a monthly donation, could be an annual volunteering day, or a drive we run to help collect stuff for single mothers, or schizophrenics, or wool we can give to others to knit. I know my cousin's family has all kinds of customs like visiting Lort Smith at least once a year with towels and blankets. They are the kind of family with long-living pets and adopted greyhounds. Some of us might always buy tickets to the same raffles each year and others pledge a regular time in our year when we do or give something to help others.

Whatever it looks like, do not stop doing it. It is real and right and needed. It is the invisible string and in someone else's world, it is what is keeping them alive and going. There should be no strings attached to that string. It might not be sugar, but an illegal substance being sought by the person getting through week by week. Could be drugs, and you might feel your nose curl up a bit at the thought. What if it is? Or it might just be a packet of chocolate biscuits to have with a cup of tea, an afternoon delight for someone in a dark month of wondering what will come next?

Que sera, sera. There is no way of knowing which way any of us is going. The road less travelled is so often unchosen or foisted upon an unknowing and unwanting person, or unknown and unwanted. The traumas from before, the loves lost and the life lived like a candle in the wind and the kindness of strangers is needed much more than any of us really understand. If you can do it, why don't you? If you want to help, why not offer it... and if you are wanting and needy, then accept the help and love and want.

To want better is the best of the human journey and to hand a ladder to another is the best of the human spirit. Be spirited. Be available. Be open to sharing the road with others and, on that road, do not be surprised if you find it is you that is wanting...