Moral Distress is the stress that “occurs when one believes they knows the right thing to do, but institutional or other constraints make it difficult to pursue the desired course of action.”
My son-in-law moved to Vancouver from London, England twelve years ago. During his first tour of the city he commented on the open drug use observed in the Main and Hasting area. He found it strange that we Vancouverites disdain cigarette smoking almost anywhere yet apparently ignore open use of hard drugs. I was chagrin to inform him that drinking alcohol in the parks was illegal here and could result in a hefty fine, and certainly a loss of your expensive bottle of wine.
Twelve years later, after a city government claiming unremitting focus on homelessness, many housing initiatives, legalization of marjauina, and some sensible relaxation in our alcohol laws, remarkably little has changed. Vancouver, with its attractive climate, liberal politics and active and relatively generous social safety net has created an environment where the homeless community can survive outdoors most of the year.
Has this visibility rendered home-sheltered Vancouverites blind to the open suffering on the streets? Has it reduced our acknowledgement to the social problems around us and created a troubling deficit in our access to empathy for our fellow human beings?
Walking along one of our prosperous downtown streets the other day, I noticed a sleeping bag crumpled and laying in the middle of the sidewalk. There was a human form in the sleeping bag. It was two degrees out. The busy business crowd flowed around the sleeping bag like a river parting around a rock. No one stopped . No one looked down. I noticed because the placement of the sleeper was unusual, but I did not stop. I was going somewhere to do something.
At home that evening I could not get the image of that human form in the sleeping bag out of my head. I worried that this person might have been very young, or encountering a Fentinal poisoning, or even dead. I was left with that haunted feeling of doubt, that because I did not check I would never know who I walked by and why they were is such an uncomfortable situation. I wondered when I started walking by such situations. Five years ago? Ten? I wondered about my diminishing humanity. Have I become immune to the sight of open suffering?
Are there too many street people to consider this particular one? Has our collective empathy for our fellow human beings finally had enough? Or do we all go home distressed? At a loss for what to do, or feel inadequate to the task? Do we resent the homeless so prefer to ignore them? Are we living in a state of haunted concern, or moral distress?