I work in a large downtown library. Many of our patrons are homeless. It’s heartbreaking on cold nights to watch people shuffle off with their gear at closing time.

“Have a good night” seems almost cruel.  I’ve started saying “Stay warm” or “Stay dry,” which is hardly better, but at least acknowledges the reality.

From behind the counter we try, but we can’t always help enough. Sometimes the hurt is so great it doesn’t matter what anyone says, because being homeless is patently not right. Occasionally people get upset, act out and facilitate books leaving the building without permission.

The stress of living on the street is excessive.  I was surprised to find that, though mental health issues do lead some to lose their homes, it’s more common that the stress of being homeless causes mental illness.

There are more people in our communities than ever before without access to adequate care. The history of mental health care in America, subject as much to politics as to any notion of our ailing social contract, reads like an epic tragedy. 

And it’s not just an American problem.

Years ago, I overheard the homeless sarcastically called ‘scholars’ in my library and it made me uncomfortable.  Now it makes me angry.  People who have the good fortune to live in houses don’t have a monopoly on intellectual curiosity.  

Sometimes, when talking up the history or science sections to a new patron, their expression seems to soften. For an instant, they look, for lack of a better word, haunted, as if by an opportunity from a previous life. I wonder if what I glimpsed was relief at being considered someone who might have the time and inclination to spend time studying a subject for pleasure.

As to the books which vanish, after a while you begin to see a pattern.  Most are from specific sections on the shelves, ghosts, magic, true crime, or Buddhism. I used to be less patient with people’s interest in ghost stories or spell books, considering it juvenile, or a way to avoid reality.  Maybe it is, just not in the way that I thought.

What if people seek out ghost stories and spell books to get away from a world in which they feel they have failed? They might hope to find some previously unknown mechanism by which they might manipulate reality in order to adjust their places in it.

Bruno Betttelheim, in his 1976 ‘The Uses of Enchantment,’ (my favorite book lately) explains that young adults who believe in magic or seek to avoid reality in other ways were often forced to face it too soon. They don’t feel secure in the real world yet.

Being homeless is more than a feeling. It is literally the state of being insecure in the world. If the world overwhelmed you, at any age, and left you without agency, who knows what you would do?

Retreat gets such a bad rap in adventure stories but it’s a sound strategy to regroup in order to formulate a plan. Resumes, proper identification, job applications, housing arrangements, health and transportation are complicated enough to organize while living in a safe place and getting adequate sleep.

And everyone wants to be safe, right? I used to consider true crime a sort of lurid rubbernecking and couldn’t understand why people head for the 364.1523 shelves. Now I know I don’t need to. The whole point of libraries is that people can read what they want.

The Buddhist books’ disappearance just seemed odd at first. But, if you think you’ve failed at traditional life, wouldn’t it be more appealing to rest your hopes on a less traditional matrix?  

Now, when someone asks, “Where are the spell books?” I don’t always just give them the Dewey number and point. Sometimes, I walk them to the spot. On a good day, words of help and encouragement come out of my mouth. 

When you treat a person who needs help, inside the library or out, like someone you enjoy spending time with, they relax and you relax. Occasionally, you see the tail of the rabbit together and you both end up with something more than the answer to a question.

What better use for imagination than to find
a new way to be kind?

If a question doesn’t make sense but is asked in a reasonable way, at the very least you can try to understand while looking for an answer.  If someone wants to know which dimension has the prettiest flowers, you might work together to determine the needs of different species. What chemicals make a flower blue? What sort of environment might best support such a flower?

What better use for imagination than to find a new way to be kind?

When a new card is made in our children’s library, a balloon loaded with confetti is pulled back and a tiny celebration begins. It’s great to see kids get excited about it.

It’s every bit as great when one of our patrons gets a home. Sometimes, a patron with a temporary card begins to ask about books on cooking, knitting, wood carving or caring for plants. It’s not surprising when, a bit later, they bring proof of their address to trade up to a regular adult card.

I remember one starched and shaved man who came in daily for about a year. After a few weeks’ absence, he came in and I didn’t recognize him because he was wearing a t-shirt.  He had found a home and finally, perhaps, was able to let his guard down.

We learned that a sweet patron had passed away recently. She had been homeless for a very long time yet was, somehow, unfailingly pleasant. If she did find a home, she didn’t get to enjoy it long enough.  A day or two after this, a man came up with proof of a permanent address and I gave him a regular card.  I stopped short of confetti, but I may have congratulated him a bit too enthusiastically. 

When a visitor came up the other day and said something about “the vibe in here,” I pretended to misunderstand his meaning. He made the extra effort and whispered, “the homeless.”

Let’s just take a second, here, to think how fine would it be if we learned to stop doing unkind things out of our own fear or insecurity. The ramifications rippling through our individual, social and political lives might be surprising. Think about it.

What if we were kind?