The Happiest Man on Earth

Editor’s note: This blog entry was written the night of Monday, April 23, 2007.

Today, I met the happiest man on earth. He is a homeless man on West 11^th Street.

I was sitting on a stoop in the shade, reading, across from the school. I saw a homeless man walking towards me. He was wearing clean jeans and a clean shirt and headphones around his neck. He had an extra bounce in his step, more than most homeless men. I glanced up from my reading. I’m not sure if it was to see what was going on or to try and figure out how I was going to avoid giving him money when he would inevitably come and ask me for a hand-out.

In looking up, I saw that his friend, a younger man, was coming towards him from the other direction. I knew, at this point, he wasn’t coming down the street to beg me, but to see his friend. I could tell relatively quickly that his younger friend was not mentally with it and the older man was essentially his care-taker. I put my head down and pretended to be reading so not to be rude in watching their interaction.

The man asked his friend if he had anything and then looked in his cup. The younger man emptied his cup into the older man’s, and the older man started to count the money.

“You hungry?” he asked his younger friend.
“Yeah.”
“You wanna eat?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you want?”
“Meat.”
“I think we’ll go to McDonald’s. And I don’t think they’ll let us eat meat there.”

He then turned to me and said, “What do you think?” I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. First, I wasn’t fully listening and didn’t hear what his friend said. Second, I didn’t want to be known as an eavesdropper in this conversation between friends. He told me what the conversation was, and I laughed. I kept reading.

I didn’t see where his friend went, but he walked back towards 6^th Ave, and the next person that walked by, he asked if she could lend him $50-million. She ignored him. He came back to me.

“Nobody’s ever willing to lend me $50-million for the weekend.”
“When I get $50-million to spare, I promise that you’ll be the first to get it.”
He laughed. “You’re a good man. I can tell you’re going places. But take my word for it: Stay in school.”

I told him I planned on it. He continued to dispense wisdom.

“Everybody’s got problems. The key is to be happy. I’m coming up on 60. I know I don’t look it and it’s hard to believe, but I am. Y’know what, we all have problems. I’ve been here now for 40 years. I’m almost 60 and I’ve been in this neighborhood for 40 years, and let me tell you: these people on this street, they’re rich, but they’re not happy. Not any of them are happy. Me? I have nothing, but I’m happy.

“They all have problems. At least I’m happy. I wasn’t in Vietnam, I had a year of college, but I have a problem. My problem is that I love beer. A lot. And I’m going to drink beer. A lot.

“You should see me, man. I have routine. I wake up every day, I get an orange juice, and then I drink some beer. And then I come out here and see if I have any energy to try and get some money. Because I gotta eat. I mean, you can’t deny the body. When the body says you gotta eat, you gotta eat. So I go to McDonald’s whenever I’m hungry and I have the money to do it.”

He then told me all about how tough things were for him during last weekend’s Nor’easter. That he was out on the street and didn’t have anywhere to go and how he couldn’t sleep because the rain kept him up and he had no money to eat and he only had what was on his back and that he was drenched. But then he went back to happiness.

“It’s not easy. But when I get happy, I dance. When I put on these headphones, I start jiggling and dancing and I get happy. Last week, I put on my headphones and started dancing, and a woman came up to me and gave me a 10-dollar bill. She said, ‘you dance good,’ and dropped it in. I looked down and was like, ‘wow…get out of here…’ and I grabbed my friend and we went to McDonald’s. ‘Cause when I get happy and put on my headphones, I dance.

“Man, all you need in life is to be happy. Stay in school, trust me, but you’re gonna do well. You just gotta stay happy. Get yourself a nice girlfriend, stay in school, and you’ll be fine. Just gotta stay happy, and you’ll be okay.”

I kept expecting him to ask me for money. And I would have definitely given him a couple of dollars. But he never asked. And I never offered. It seemed like it wasn’t expected at that point. Just the fact that I treated him like a human was enough for him. I owed him nothing, if only because I gave him the only thing people normally don’t: human interaction.

We shook hands and he turned back to 6^th Avenue and wished me to have a good day. I got up to go to class and said, not really thinking, “Good luck!” He turned back and said, “I’ve learned never to deal in luck.”

It was the most fulfilling human-interaction I can remember ever having. This man who has only the clothes on his back, some music to dance to, a friend, and whatever he hustles for in order to buy beer and eat at McDonald’s, gave me more than anyone has given me in years.

He needed to be treated like a human, and I needed someone to show me how good life really is – even when it isn’t.

As sure I am that he appreciated that I treated him like a human, I appreciated that he treated me as one. He expected nothing of me. He took nothing for granted. Unlike friends, who start to take for granted the people around them and forget to treat friends as human, this man – this homeless man with the world defecating on him – showed me how happy he is just to be treated like a human.

And y’know what, so was I.