Achieving Death

There must be an element in society who are pathologically averse to putting themselves to the sweat of labour. Work of any kind. Perhaps they feel it's beneath them to extend themselves in any way. And since they have to live, to keep body and soul together, they do it on the public trust. Preferring to be dependent on hand-outs, while maintaining that they're being independent.

Idleness and improvidence appear more attractive to those who reject a normal life-style.

Most people in society who accept societal norms and want nothing more for themselves than to lead a normal life which includes having a home, nearness to family, a circle of friends and/or acquaintances, a working life, and leisure opportunities for their personal fulfillment. And these are the people, who represent the aggregate in society, who are bemused by the choices made by those whose lives are somehow upturned, leaving them living on the streets.

No one, most normal people believe, would willingly choose to live on the streets. A kind of vulnerable, dangerous lifestyle that truly is inconceivable to most people. There are, granted, impossible to deny, people with mental afflictions who should be cared for in institutions paid for by tax dollars because they are incapable of making good choices for themselves due to their intellectual frailty and instability.

There are young people who get off on a bad start in life, whose familial life has been a failure, incapable of meeting their emotional and supportive needs, and often enough violating their childhoods, leaving them adrift and incapable of fending for themselves. They end up on the streets and live a miserable life fraught with street dangers, often addicted to drugs and alcohol. They need help and guidance.

And then there are the thugs, the layabouts, those who reject the lunatic notion that people should be responsible for themselves. Why bother, when society attempts to offer responsibility on their behalf, when there are charitable, compassionate groups and organizations who strain their meager resources to help street people as best they can, offering a place to sleep, the sustenance of food, referrals to health clinics?

Not for them the economic slavery of working for a living. They will beg on the streets for 'loose change' from passersby to enable them to buy their beverage of choice. And they will visit the Ottawa Mission or the Salvation Army or any other group set up to offer assistance. And they will get into altercations there, and be invited, then finally firmly escorted to leave the premises.

And they will gather in the streets and quarrel with one another there. And, like Sunday's confrontation between a handful of street people confronting one another belligerently, one of them will stab another to death, and thus ends the life of someone with a quick and nasty temper and an unwillingness to take responsible charge of his life.

Henry Belmore had a friend who will mourn him. John O'Mara witnessed, without realizing what was occurring, his friend being stabbed to death by someone whom he had insulted on the street. Henry Belmore spoke boastfully and delusionally about his influential contacts, about what he envisioned he would achieve as an artist.

He, like many other men and women in similar situations, spent time in jail. Part of the street culture, perhaps. Where petty crime to earn the wherewithal for another bottle of beer or wine, or to buy the drugs that make life seem briefly worthwhile occasionally lands someone in jail through the brief misfortune of getting caught.

What he achieved was an unfortunate, early death. Another regrettable homicide in the wee hours of the morning.