How does homeless feel? That is hard to explain

Being homeless is a “psychological dilemma a person’s ego must contend with on a 24-7 basis.”

By David Lanier Special To The Daily Record

Posted: May 18, 2009 at 6 a.m.

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Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of stories exploring homelessness in northwest Arkansas. The stories are written by David Lanier, a former sports editor of The Benton County Daily Record, who has been homeless for the better part of the past five years.

The most disdainful, inane question a sports writer can ask is, “How does it feel?”

How does it feel — to be homeless?

Initially one suffers from a loss of self-esteem when all of the normalities like a job, a place to sleep in heavenly peace — i.e. a bedroom, luxuriating on a mattress — have disappeared, thereby discombobulating the feeling of self-worth.

That’s a never-ending psychological dilemma a person’s ego must contend with on a 24-7 basis.

Even while sleeping sometimes, nightmares and flashbacks about the “good ole days” plague the inner self.

After the premiere shock effect of being less fortunate than in one’s glory days lapses, a sense of selfpreservation kicks in.

Self-reliance becomes the credo because “whom do I trust sometimes?” evolves into me, myself and I.

When one of my happy camper compadres, Dewayne, ventured forth into the woodlands informing the other campers of my in-dwelling in their environs, one inveterate camper, Cecil Day, expressed initial distrust of me. I told Cecil he could trust me. “I don’t trust anyone,” he remarked with disdain. “The only person I trust is myself.” Later he told me he didn’t want me to write anything about him. Comradeship in the woods bonds would-be distrustful dudes into friends for life. After enduring inclement weather and proving my stern mettle, Cecil changed his attitude and told me, “You can write a chapter in your book about me.”

So now, Cecil, whom do you trust?

“In God We Trust” became the hallmark for our Founding Fathers.

Likewise, no matter where someone rests his head at night, all us campers invoke prayers to our Heavenly Father.

As some friends told me while I was a wrongly accused resident of the Washington County Detention Center during the February Ice Ages, God only puts us through as much as we can endure.

Attitude distinguishes character.

If one maintains a happy-go-lucky sense of humor amid the trials and travails of life’s scariest moments, everyone in our midst laughs and feels much, much better.

Or as Bob Dylan crooned, “It’s life and life only.”

My favorite poem, “If,” by Rudyard Kipling, emboldened me during some of my dreariest moments when strength of character invigorated my philosophical approach to “why me?”

“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

“And treat those two impostors just the same,

“Then you’ll earn the moniker of ‘a man.’”

Also, Ecclesiastes 3 became my shibboleth of existence while I was incarcerated with some really cool dudes during the holidays — Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s: “There is a time and a purpose” for everything.

That divine philosophy — of accepting the fatefulness of existence and that there’s a reason and a purpose which might not be self-evident but someday will fall into the grand scheme of things — provides a perspective on accepting things as they are until the true meaning has been revealed.

Bonding with fellow crusaders in the adventures of life brings one into the spirit of “We’re all in this together.”

Or, when adversity strikes, the strong lead the weaker.

After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, New York Mayor John Lindsey pacified and inspired calm amid the storm by walking hand in hand with his black brethren through the Harlem ghettoes and singing the Negro spiritual “We Shall Overcome.”

That’s the anthem anyone can adapt and adopt whenever fate evolves from Happy Days to Camping Out in the Wilderness.

Yes, my brethren, “We Shall Overcome.”

As Sir Winston Churchill intoned at the Harrow School graduation ceremonies in 1941, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.

Never say never.

The question remains: “How does it feel to be homeless?”

Initially, after accepting the fact that one doesn’t have a secure homestead, the support network switches from family to friends. Homeless people help other homeless people.

According to one of my camping mentors, Spencer Craft, homeless categories break down to three essentials.

First, there’s the newbies who don’t really know how to cope; they rely on the leaders like Spencer who’ve been there, done that and compassionately aid their crestfallen followers.

Then there are those who don’t desire to reacclimate themselves into the burdens of punching a time clock in a regular routine and the obligatory bill paying of rent, utilities and other prerequisites to surviving in corporate America. They chose to be homeless, and thank you very much, that’s the carefree lifestyle they prefer to adhere to.

Likewise, their spiritual mentor, Henry David Thoreau, eloquently stated that point of view in his treatise “Walden.”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberatively, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived,” Thoreau wrote.

Communing with nature in the campgrounds of “tent cities” provides a pacifying spirit of the natural order of things.

Then, there it is again, that question: “How does it feel to be homeless?”

There’s an unresolved sense of loss of a secure identity.

What was once a complete individual with self-esteem — confidence that the future would be rosy and everything was hunkydory — dissipates into fear of the unknown, paranoia that the police might be lurking and disrupt one’s peace of mind.

Whenever one awakens and devises a game plan for the day, alternative game plans must be approached, because on a normal basis, things just don’t go the way one originally envisioned.

There’s always a hope that the future will be just as bright as the “good ole days,” if only one could get lucky and find a job that would lead to a real kinship of family and friends.

Coming Tuesday: Mac Childs is an inspirational force in aiding the homeless through the auspices of the College Avenue Baptist Church in Fayetteville.

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