The statistics are alarming, to say the least. According to a recent report, about 564,708 people in the U.S. are homeless and living on the streets. For decades, there have been many attempts meant to put an end to homelessness in the United States, but progress has been extremely slow.
Now, the question is, could it be that our own misconceptions and the way we perceive homeless people get in the way of dealing with this issue once and for all?
The tendency is to dehumanize homeless people. We make false assumptions about the reasons they ended up on the street. Bluntly put, we often think of them as bad people.
But when we do this, we actually contribute to the problem, instead of being a part of the solution.
The video below shows Los Angeles based video blogger Josh Paler Lin giving a homeless man $100, and tells him to spend it any way he wants. What happens next proves that homeless people can actually teach us a thing or two about sharing and about being generous and kind
This video was posted a couple of years back, but the message behind it is as powerful today as it was on the day it surfaced online. Take a look:
