Vulnerability

'All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.'

They are invisible to us, yet the homeless are still there.

We walk past them on street corners, and step over them in crowds, yet we don't see them.

Our emotions are numbed to their desperation, and we no longer want to hear their story, but they won't go away.

The homeless represent to us our greatest fears. We avoid looking at them, so we don't have to face the very real truth of life, which is that we are all vulnerable. We all face the possibility of complete helplessness. We are all at risk of losing everything. And we are all brothers and we cannot deal with the depths of someone else's 'failure'.

But we have too.

By facing our own greatest fears we help each other to overcome them. When we feel the depth of our own pain, we release it, and can help another face his.

When we see ourselves as part of the collective humankind, we take responsibility for the whole, and understand that even the smallest of gestures to help one person less fortunate than ourselves, we have an enormous impact on the world.