Worn out a welcome
by Bob on February 9, 2008
There is an old phrase that people used to use when I was young: "You've worn out your welcome".
It's a harsh phrase with very harsh meanings and implications.
If someone stays too long despite being invited, they used to say, in the uneasiness of the situation "you've worn out your welcome".
Imagine, though, if one has worn out his welcome with Life itself. That's a terrible situation and outcome and burden for the person in question.
In an ideal world, no one could ever wear out their welcome because the Golden Rule would always be in operation, and it would be impossible for it to happen. Or perhaps it could even with the Golden Rule.
The poor and afflicated, downtrodden and homeless, are constantly reminded that they have worn out their welcome with society-at-large. For a homeless person, every single day is a crisis and an emergency. This is so very hard to imagine for anyone who is left with no choices. It's even hard to imagine what it means to have no options in life itself, but the poor, homeless, sick and downtrodden in fact have no options or safety net. There's no one to turn to. There's no one who cares. There's no good meal. There's no movie on. There's no pretty music or paintings. It's all bleak and black, as the Stones song "Paint it Black" sang.
In Kris Kristofferson's 1970 song "Me and Bobby McGee", it says that "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose". Well, that is and isn't so.
There is a point which seems to be a point of no return. A slippery rock bottom of a descent. An endless pit with no way up. Cliches abound which are of little help in such a situation. A cliche like "The pessimist sees only difficulty in opportunities" is a good example. The homeless, poor, troubled, etc. person is largely abandoned by life and society, let alone his former friends and family. There is no option imaginable to him. But yet he does not easily feel the freedom that Kristofferson sang about with nothing left to lose. That's largely because the downtrodden and abandoned people have lost the thread back to the world like the one which got Theseus out of the Labyrinth with the Minotaur through the thread laid by Ariadne. There just isn't that way back for a hopeless person.
This might not make sense to anyone who hasn't experienced it. One outside that reality can always flip on the History Channel and watch some program on the Napoleonic Wars. Or American Idol. Or phone in for a delivery of a nice Chinese meal or pizza. There is an option. There is a telephone. There is a table. There is a set of plates to eat off of, and a set of silverware to eat with.
Without that ability, life itself becomes an unbearable horror movie of the worst kind. Many people turn to drugs and alcohol to escape and save pennies to get it. Other just internally collapse in their hearts and put their heads down on the pavement in the streets or train stations until they are kicked out and then the next emergency happens as to where to go next to rest one's weary head.
So, we see that the poor and afflicted and destitute have worn out their welcome with society through no fault of their own in most cases. And there was no effective helping hand to get them out of it, so they gave it. And their live were irreparably broken and smashed into little bits of pieces all over the place, and no longer in a corporeal body united or even united and made one into a spirit to live on.
There was another old saying. "You have to know when to get out". But, as Dickens might have written as in Great Expectations, put the case that there is no where to get out to.
And that is the worst state of being that anyone can be in.
Something has to change to repair our universe before it's all too late and the Tower of Babel comes crumbling down again. If we only realised that this could happen we would correct it all. But we are blind to it. The endless cycle of human existence, or the Wheel of Life. One can only aspire to Nirvana. From the very bottom of the ladder, it's a long climb. And few ever make it up the ladder. And it's very lonely down at the bottom of the pit of abandonment. Horribly so.
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"It is difficult to truly understand someone else's pain- physical or psychic. It is important to be non-judgmental, even when that pain becomes a source of your own pain. It is always a delicate balance between wanting to help and respecting another's desires and needs. Perhaps all that matters is that we are sensitive to this and do our best. Not every problem has a solution and some things take time to heal". --- Lowell Greenberg