An unexpected digression

I’ve worked in medical and public health professions for many years, and into my late fifties expected to continue in that direction indefinitely.  A budgetary shortfall at the public agency which employed me, however, led to an agency-wide reduction in force procedure; I discovered abruptly that I was RIF’ed.  Just shy of 60, I found myself seeking a safe haven in the job market, and after a long search relocated to Seattle working for a private consultation firm.  After a year and a half there, I again found myself in the job market, this time as the whole US economy was reeling and sliding toward its current state.  A long period of fruitless searching for jobs that simply weren’t arising left me in a shortfall to cover even basic expenses.

Until then I never had thought to get help with such basic needs as food—I’d always felt self-sufficient.  At that point, I came to see that I wasn’t above getting help, or beyond getting help, or the wrong person to get help.

Things had changed for me; I now needed something and I should accept it.  So I went to the Food Bank to see if that felt right and could hand me the help I needed.  It did just that.

Food Bank staff offered me what they had available on the sole basis that I believed I needed it.  They never took any judgmental posture or imposed any precondition other than that I was from their neighborhood.  Since we were receiving the benefit of what they offered and found the whole idea of it gratifying, my wife and I began volunteering time there ourselves.  I found it as satisfying seen from the inside as a worker as it was from a client’s viewpoint.  The people there, volunteers and paid workers both, had as their first motive helping people who required it, without imposing their own template of who was deserving. 

It educated me to see that those drawing on foodbank services to make ends meet were not only acutely, visibly impoverished people but a broad range of folks who could not quite get by with things as they are today.  Some looked like working class—others looked like middle class—some seemed cast adrift—but they all were in need.

As luck would have it, I did find a job to reenter the work force and (for now, at least) resume self-sufficiency.  This long interlude, though, left me acutely aware that many capable people simply don’t have the good fortune today to do what they can and work for their pay.  For now, they have to call on the resources their communities can provide.  On some other day, they may offer the same good will.

~~Paul Stepak