I am struggling a bit.   A few days ago I woke up pre-dawn, made a cup of coffee, threw on sweats and got the dogs ready to head out for their morning ritual. Every day the same, until it isn’t. The photo here speaks volumes.

We recently moved about twenty minutes down the road from our nice suburban home with all of the trimmings to an apartment in the heart of Santa Monica, CA.   It’s a move designed to bring the kids, well I guess all of us, closer to the “real world.”   Get us out of the bubble of our comfort zone and into the mix. Radical to some I suppose, we didn’t think twice.

Why move you ask? Well, empathy is a big part of it. Sure, there are others reasons: proximity to school and work, a local coffee shop on the corner, a quick walk to the movies and a bike ride to the gym. But those are really just conveniences.  The real reason is to experience the totality of being in broad context . To see how others live and to in turn better understand and assess our lot in life. I guess it’s a way to grasp the meaning of “to have and have not” to some degree. Anyway, it was time to get out of the bubble.

When asked about it I find myself saying, “Its good to expose the kids to all walks of life.” Folks politely nod and smile, though I am still not convinced we see eye-to-eye. My subtext? Its not all rainbows and ponies, people need exposure to and experience with the underbelly.  They need to see that life really is a bit like Hawkings, Ind., with a Right Side Up and an Upside Down. Here in Santa Monica, where homelessness has increased 75% in the last 6 years, instead of Up and Down its Haves and Have Nots. In theory exposure to this is a good thing, certainly makes for an admirable sound bite and timely social fodder.

So then, why, when I open the door to head out with the dogs in the pre-dawn light, and I am confronted with a person sleeping in my walkway, a person sleeping just outside the warm beds of my sleeping family, why is my first instinct fear? After all this is why I am here, to confront an unfiltered reality. I guess the fear is natural, but what is haunting me, the thing I can’t shake, is that was only after that initial fear did I revert to empathy. I can’t help but think it should been the other way around. I mean the person was sleeping, why is fear necessary at all?

I regroup and dig around the kitchen to come up with coconut water, a few bananas and an apple. Then I quietly place them next to the person sleeping in the walkway and turn back inside. Snacks for some, daily rations for others.

They say if you put out a saucer of milk for a stray you’ll have a cat for life. I start to freak: fear and empathy battle in the brain. What if every morning I have this person sleeping in my walkway waiting for another breakfast? Then what if it spreads to dinner? And then word gets out and there are two of them, then four? What if they are violent and threaten my family? Break into our apartment at the top of the stairs? Will they pee in the bushes and howl at the moon? Did I lead them on? Was it the right thing to do?

No joke, I am struggling a bit. It’s a good thing we moved. Reality has a way of clarifying the theoretical. So now the struggle is real…