My wife went back to her parent's house in early January this year.
This has become a sort of habit at each year so that she gets an opportunity to spend some quality time with her family. We usually prefer to spend the summer vacations in the Azores where the weather is nicer and we have more fun exploring the other nearby islands.
This means that during these months I'm left home alone just like in my single days.
One of the things that bothers me the most is having to stay alone in the house - a silent house is nowhere pleasant so I spend most of my free time going outside to the street and work at the laptop over a nice cup of coffee and dinner in most cases.
Spending a lot of time at the same places has got me starting to recognize the faces from people that I don't know from anywhere.
It's a strange feeling to see the years pass and look how people change. Worser yet to notice the behavior patterns for some people and starting to guess what they'll be doing.
It's a small closed environment where all faces become familiar but yet none of them is your acquaintance.
There is a folk in particular that grabs my attention, it's a homeless person which notoriously spends even more time than myself wandering around the several city locations where people usually gather.
He's always alone, never talking to anyone else but always enjoying the somewhat warmth from being close to other people.
In big cities at mainland it's easy to do exactly like everyone else does - just ignore and move away. Around here it's different.
You go drink a coffee by the seaside and you'll see him, you go to the mall grab some dinner and he'll probably be there too. You even go out at night and you'll see the same person wandering at the most active parties. It's a small city indeed but you get far more aware of these sort of situations that you'd ever see in a metropolitan city.
And this bothers me a lot.
Not the homeless, but rather the exclusion to which we, the people of the society have silently voted to outcast them so subtly.
Yet, he fights to keep his dignity - to do the things that many of us take as granted on their daily routines.
Something is wrong but what can we do?
It's not a matter of money, it's not even a matter of doing community service. It's a question of thinking on solutions for truly integrating people in this unfortunate situation instead of leaving them on the outside.
Otherwise how can we say that things have evolved for humankind if our kind is not human enough to take of each others?
No, something really needs to change.
