Self Honesty

So I was having a difficult time with figuring out what to write about in the blog, as I usually do, but I thought that I should write something about being honest with people. Over the past few weeks I have come into a greater appreciation of what it means to be honest with someone. My version on honesty up until about a month ago was being whatever anyone wanted me to be in an effort to make them happy. Pretty much just doing anything anyone wanted so that they would like me. Since coming here in August I’ve worked very hard at that, filling out applications for people in homeless court, giving out vouchers for the winter shelter, and living on $500 a month. I’m not saying that none of that was beneficial for me or anyone else, but the lesson it seems to be driving home is that no matter what you think you can do to get someone to like you, you have to like yourself first. Only then will people respect and understand who you are.

I realized this first hand when we tired to give out bag lunches last week. As some people may know we as an organization have had a bit of trouble trying structure the incoming people in the dining room. People come round and round without regard to the effort or work put into creating the meal, and much of the second and third meals are thrown away. So last Wednesday we started handing out bag lunches for the people who needed a meal. Our policy is that each person gets only one meal. Last week we tried to enforce that, and I decided to put myself on the front line. I decided that I would be the one to pull people out of line if I knew they already had a lunch. It didn’t take long for someone to get upset with me. The first guy I pulled out pretty much looked like he wanted to kill me. I was kind of expecting that so it didn’t bother me so much. There was also another guy there who was intent on getting in even though he had already had a lunch, and pushed he way through and everyone who was there had to escort him out.

After a whole morning of that I realized something, that it was ok to say no, and that the reality was that there were a lot of people who were putting in their time, effort, and money to help people and we all deserved to be treated with respect. Not walked all over. So I was honest with everyone and let them know that we were not going to flex the rules for anyone or take anyone’s crap. It was a huge lesson for me to learn that. I learned that I could speak honestly with someone even if it hurt them and know I was still being loving to both them and myself. It wasn’t the lesson that I thought I would learn devoting my time to a service organization but hey as Forest Gump would say “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.”

~Mike