A woman I met at a chatty ‘get together’  asked me what I did. I hate the question, not because I’m ashamed of what I do but I think people are too quick to define each other by the work they do and the status that gives you. When the work I did wasn’t strictly above board I couldn’t answer it honestly but more recently I’m getting people saying stuff like ‘uww, you’re a saint..’

I’m no more a saint than when I used to do the stuff I used to do, but that’s a rant for another piece. In this case I answered the question honestly ‘I work for a ‘homeless charity’ and I told her about this project, ‘Listen Up!’. Her response took me by surprise:

– ‘A while ago I see a homeless man painting a picture on the street. In that second I realise that he is just a man like my son or my husband. He has a hand that he draws with, a mind that he thinks with and a heart that he feels with. He is a man, no more, no less.

The sight of him painting that beautiful piece of art cracked open my mind like a warm egg, which I fried, along with a deep-seated preconception that there was such a thing as a ‘homeless person’. In the moment when that poisonous seed was obliterated by the enlightenment of creativity I could see clearly that there was no such thing as ‘a homeless person’. 

Okay, she wasn’t quite as erudite as that but what she said really showed that creativity in all its forms is a way of generating empathy and respect between us humans so that we see the person in front of us rather than a preconceived notion of a person, stripped of their humanity.

And of course, she was right, there is no such thing as a ‘homeless person’, there are just people who happen not to have a home.