It was unseasonably warm as I was running in the early
morning on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. Though it was late October I was
wearing only shorts and a T-shirt. It was before the sun came up. I was hoping
to see a beautiful sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean that morning as I ran along
the boardwalk. I was not disappointed. I snapped a few photos from my phone
every few minutes. As anyone who has watched the sunrise knows, it is an
ever-changing brightness of reds, oranges, and yellows. I was not the only one
mesmerized by it. Others were stopping and taking pictures of the magnificence
as well.
I would post a picture of this beautiful morning. I know
others would also post their pictures from the comfort of their oceanfront
hotel room. My posts and the others on
social media would give an appearance of a beautiful place filled with
happiness and hope, that a new day with an incredible sunrise always brings. Yet
I knew that my picture would just be an illusion and incomplete. It would not
include those who would start the day with little warmth, little food, and
little hope.
You see, as I was running before the sun rose, I could see
along the closed businesses and in the chairs and benches that are spread along
the boardwalk, people bundled with blankets and tattered clothing, sleeping.
They are homeless people. When the sun rose, unlike me and the other tourists
who eagerly took in the rising sun with joy, they did nothing. Some were
beginning to rustle, others kept sleeping.
While I am not surprised to see this. It always saddens me to witness this so close. Here in Atlantic City, in the casinos on this very boardwalk, people will be gambling hundreds and thousands of dollars. Just outside their entrance a homeless person will be begging for a dollar. These people had put all their chips on the table, gambling on the game of life and lost it all.
This is not a bashing of Atlantic City, because just this
year I encountered homeless people on runs in upstate New York and rural New
Hampshire. I have encountered them on the west coast as well. I have noticed
that they are visibly invisible. We all see them but look past them. We avoid
eye contact. Most people are bothered by the begging they do. It is
uncomfortable. That day alone when I was walking on the boardwalk, I gave out a
dollar to five different individuals.
Like me on social media, others will post pictures of the
beautiful sunrise, beautiful landscapes, and happy people. As if life is always
great. Yet we all know that is not true because those visibly invisible people
are there. The camera is just not pointed in their direction. I contemplated
stopping and taking a picture of a homeless person to give a complete picture
of my run. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It would be using that person
as a prop to show an ugliness in our society. That person is still an
individual and somehow, I thought that they would not appreciate that their
face would be used as a symbol of something wrong in society.
Our lives are all a journey with many forks in the road. I
am not sure how their decisions led them to this life. Maybe it was addiction,
maybe mental illness, maybe just plain bad luck. They were once in their life
very visible to others, now they are invisible to most people. I wondered how
their life’s journey brought them to this point.
I have written about tackling all different types of weather
when I run, from bitter cold to heat, and in rain, snow and sleet. I do love
being in elements, but that is temporary. Even if I spend hours in horrible
conditions I will usually end up in a nice hot shower, with a good meal and a
comfortable bed. I look at these people sleeping on the boardwalk and think how
hard that is. For example, the morning before, the mist and wind made the
boardwalk wet and slippery. I am sure that those people sleeping on the
boardwalk had the dampness soak through to their bones.
I am not sure why this experience and encounter motivated me
to write about a sadder part of our society. When I posted a picture of the sunrise,
I mentioned that everything was not beautiful and that there were homeless
people. One woman commented that she was glad that I had that observation. I
think that she had hit on something. Too often we do not give a complete
picture of life. We give what we want.
I do not have any answer for homelessness. Yet I believe we
cannot solve a problem if we do not see it. In this case we often, on a
personal level, do not want to see it. I myself have complained about a
vacation location that there were too many homeless people. As if they came
there to ruin my vacation plans. We have to see the homeless not as visibly
invisible, but as people.
When I got home the next day, I took my normal morning run
in my neighborhood. It is a nice area of Northern New Jersey, and I enjoyed it.
There are no homeless people on this run. Yet I thought back to the other runs
that I described. It is nice to pretend that something is not there. However, I
don’t like lying to myself. That next day I searched the internet to see where
I could help at a soup kitchen or someplace else. I can’t pretend some people
are invisible anymore.
