The Psychology of Birds
I have always believed that the purpose of life is to experience life. I hadn’t ambition, drive, or motivation for a career path, dogma, or rite of way. The liberty in which I experienced life afforded to me by my parents, gave me a colorful view of the world. This hue came into focus as I took to the skies and found my true home. I lived on land for sixteen years, and my first affliction with my destiny took me out of my comfort zone and into coach planes. I traveled short distances, Texas to Mexico, Texas to California, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, New York, Maine. My wings brought me into myself more than any destination ever could.
When I arrived in Paris with blind ambition and empty pockets, not much was known to me. Plans and lodging arrangements had hidden themselves from my coherent, and I hadn’t the curiosity to seek them out for myself. I had seen the world over from the eyes of an American. I was destined to find what I was looking for, besides, I could not think of a better place to explore my youth.
Americans travel differently than their European counterparts. The term “exploration” came from the original Western world. After I arrived, I was exposed to a reality that had yet to actualize itself across the Atlantic. The truth of a world divided into the haves and the have-nots. Within this division, many intersectionalities exist. The U.S. Annual Homelessness Assessment of 2022 reported a record number of homeless citizens occupying streets, shelters, and temporary homes. The Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated approximately 582,000 people experienced a form of homelessness, within the year. These figures represent the growing epidemic of homelessness that is plaguing the modern world, which has failed to innovate the desire to live within the confines of society. But, is the problem that simple? There exist outliers due to a slue of factors that can be traced to psychological origins. The topic of homelessness became a very real factor in my personal life at the beginning of 2023, when I embarked on a cross-country American journey, that took me from my home and into the homes of many strangers and friends. Today, there are many social provisions to protect people from what psychologists have identified as the “tertiary” form of homelessness: street-dwelling. Street dwellers encompass those who sleep on the streets of busy cities across the world. As my travels have extended across the globe, I have witnessed firsthand the unpredictability of lodging costs, the availability of affordable temporary options, and the limitations of such social programs that categorize the three types of homelessness within the Western world. My primary focus for this article will focus on the geographical fringes of the homeless population in Paris, France.
I cannot stop myself from looking to the sky to alleviate the worries on my shoulders. The weight of the world feels like a 50 kg backpack for the last ten months. My only travel companion has been with me as I walked through sun, snow, and rain, from doorsteps to porches of friends. I relied on the kindness of strangers and friends to fuel my journey. My home became inundated with the sheets I shared with hosts from states across the country, Europe, and the world. A person would extend a room to me, a couch for me, for a night, maybe two. I continued in this unconventional sharing of spaces, with each plane ticket I purchased. Yes, it is true. I go from place to place, making very little, and eating less; sleeping wherever I can lay my head. Once asleep, the lullaby of my Sunday school teachers rock me to sleep; lessons of youth flying overhead with fervor, comfort me now:
Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
Matthew 6:26–27 (New King James Version)
Tourists walk differently than the typical Parisian. Tourists walk aimlessly with the possibility of a new day lighting up their availability to new and pleasant experiences. I wonder if your availability for these experiences increases your aptitude to participate in them. I have learned being liberal in my thinking has served me well. It influences my disposition. I do not have the comfort or leisure to influence my likelihood to participate in new experiences; my aptitude for the unknown is my only livelihood. The vision I have for a life with no stress permeates the streets I walk. After weeks of searching Paris, I was able to secure a job, scraping together $70/week. I made it work until I lost my only source of tangible income on Monday, September 25, 2023. When I was let go of the company that took a chance on me, I was lost in a lesser-than-new city with only $20 to my name. My lodging was spotty and inconsistent. I would now have to manage indefinitely for a new livelihood with $20. Concepts such as morals and ethics are rudimentary in the development of a conventional human, inundated into society for the conduct of its inhabitants. But what happens to the psychologically inept, drug-addicted, and hapless? Does Solace skip over them? Are they lower than the value of pigeons that repopulate, only to scurry around and eat for free alongside city roads and park benches, flocking to the hands of the generous? Where is the silver lining?
I met an older woman who slept beside me as I typed this article. Her skin was dark, and her history was course. War had led her to seek refuge in Paris. This city is unforgiving, romantic, hedonistic, luxurious, and opulent. It is also broken and strewn alongside the road and under bridges. Many humans seek solace. I do not wake her, but when her eyes do meet mine our connection extends into a short-lived conversation. I put my writing aside to engage with my seat companion. She carries her life with her, the same as I do. We chose a cafe for peace, where they do not bother the unemployed and wandering. My self-pity is worn into something of admiration in the presence of someone who maintains kindness, eats hardy meals, and sleeps in the best cafes. The narratives we write of the people we do not understand are rich with fanatical details of the “other”.
Nicolas Pleace, author of “Researching Homelessness in Europe,” identifies the many fallacies present when conceptualizing homelessness factors that keep a person houseless; factors such as self-affliction, mental aptitude, and structural failures, that enable the trajectory for a person’s propensity to change their situation, at the very least move to a higher tier of houselessness — with the hopes of securing a permanent residence. The theoretical article analyzes several psychologists’ viewpoints on the issue’s prevalence and visibility (Pleace, 25) in the modern developed world.
The “ETHOS” definition of Homelessness, by Bill Edgar, divides homelessness, specifically European houselessness into three specific domains that encompass housing insecurity: physical, social, and legal. Any combination of the domains differentiates the extent to which an individual housing insecurity experience is defined. European typology for demain implications is as follows: roofless, houseless, insecure, and inadequate. The visibility of rooflessness can be seen on the streets and sidewalks of transportation stations, parks, and bridges. These public spaces are shared, by citizens and the proximal survivors.
The psychological effect of street dwelling undoes a person’s capacity for civility. The separation of entities disrupts the very delicate fabric of humanity. To share in humanness from this perspective — although each psychological domain can be altered by the circumstances that define the continuation of a person’s predicament — is subversive. How long does it take for one’s sanity to be compromised? The European Census measures the psychological effect of the housing-compromised in increments of one year or longer. The transitory period, in between the aforementioned categorizations of houselessness, under twelve months is therefore excluded from this study. Long-term effects on operational living situations have a profound effect on the psychological model of citizenry and integration.
The devolution of a person’s ethics is typically attributed to their socio-economic status before housing insecurity. Access to nutrition, water, and physiological needs that are not met consistently impair an individual from fully integrating into society. The inadequacy is further exasperated by the prevalence of addictive substances in many cases is more accessible than proper psychiatric care.
It took two weeks for the rose-colored glasses I entered Paris with to fade into gray and stoic statues. There is an air purpose that guides metro users. A tourist only needs a few hours to realize and scurry under the ground-walking Parisians above head. There is movement in the city, and in between its momentum, my lack revealed itself. I organized a survival plan at this moment. If I were to integrate, I needed work, purpose, and community. The latter is the most challenging to find. Despite France’s history of exploration, the small cliques that exist within Paris are even more exclusive than their clubs and department stores. To insert yourself within society requires overcoming several barriers: financial, social, and legal. Similar to the categorizations that separate the experiences of homelessness.
I arrived in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, on September 16, 2023, at 2 a.m. After descending from the mero platform, I saw a network of tents and mattresses underneath the kilometer-long stretch of much of the street Stalingrad. This network, in the daylight, revealed itself as a community of asylum-seekers outside of the French system of social care. Edgar’s subcategory of houselessness includes temporary arrangements, accommodations, and homeless shelters. Large cities provide a prospect for opportunity to work and better living conditions, even if the systems set in place are not able to contend with the growing population of the changing typography.
The effects of long-term homelessness are detrimental to an individual’s physical and mental health. According to the ETHOS definition of the subcategories of homelessness, housing insecurity can be just as influential in the undoing of the individual’s social conditioning. Many of the assistance programs present do not address the mental depositories that develop from living without security, social inundation, and nutrition. The growing prevalence of homelessness in the Western world reveals a discrepancy in the care that we as citizens give to voices of the proximal.
