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Piano students present holiday recital at Keystone Gardens in Larksville

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AAA: If you’re drinking on Super Bowl Sunday, don’t plan on driving

<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; Webster defines compassion as &#8220;the sympathetic consciousness of others&#8217; distress together with a desire to alleviate it.&#8221;</p><p>Antonyms for compassion include &#8220;callousness, coldheartedness, hard-heartedness, and heartlessness.&#8221;</p><p>I prefer to live in a compassionate world.</p><p>And so would all those human beings who have, for any number of reasons, found themselves homeless and living in makeshift tents under a bridge, relying on the warmth of a Sterno can.</p><p>I learned about compassion at a very young age, having been the only child of two loving parents who not only believed in helping their fellow human beings, but felt it was everyone&#8217;s duty to do all they could to help those less fortunate.</p><p>Case in point: We lived next door to a family of little means &#8212; a mom and pop and three children, the youngest being a special-needs boy named Chuckie. Chuckie would play in the yard, seemingly living in his own world. My pals and I would always say hello to Chuckie and he would smile back and wave.</p><p>The Mister Softee truck or Dairy Dan would roll through the neighborhood every evening around 6 and the kids would rush to get to the window for a treat &#8212; me included. But my mom would insist that I first get a vanilla cone for Chuckie &#8212; his favorite &#8212; before I could get something for myself.</p><p>This was one of my first lessons in compassion.</p><p>I learned many more lessons from my parents, compassion being just one and, perhaps, the most important.</p><p>Which brings me to those homeless people trying to keep warm under a bridge in sub-zero temperatures.</p><p>Without debate, this just shouldn&#8217;t be.</p><p>No matter what the reasons are for these human beings to be without shelter is not important &#8212; not at all. What is important is that these people have no place to go to be warm enough to survive. Yes, some of these people are in such a dire situation because they may drink too much, or they are lazy and don&#8217;t want to work. Some of them might have fallen on hard times where they suffered some debilitating health problem or they lost their job and couldn&#8217;t pay their bills.</p><p>Again I will say that the reasons don&#8217;t matter. No reason is justified for a community to allow this to be the case for fellow human beings. There has to be a system in place to provide shelter and meals, at the very least, for human beings to be taken care of in times like this. Get them safe and then deal with the issues each faces.</p><p>There are some people in our community who have long-advocated for a homeless shelter for men. These people know that a shelter is needed, yet it has not happened. And we need a program that will accept any and all who need help. We need to provide a shelter for those who are homeless, regardless of their situation and blood-alcohol level.</p><p>And the reason we need this sort of program is simple &#8212; it&#8217;s the right thing to do.</p><p>I am concerned we don&#8217;t have such a facility in Luzerne County. We should have at least one, if not more. Homelessness is a growing problem and one that is not going away. We need to do everything we can as a community to help these people, not just sit back and watch them freeze to death, or drink themselves to death. And we can&#8217;t find solace or justification in saying they brought it all on themselves.</p><p>While this may be true in some cases, there are always reasons for that. The most hopeless of the homeless really would like to be anything but, if given the opportunity to escape. Nobody can convince me that any of these people are content with their hapless situation.</p><p>While those of us who stand in judgment of these people worry about how to keep pipes from freezing, why aren&#8217;t we also concerned about how to keep fellow human beings from freezing to death?</p><p>We need all leaders in our community to make this a priority. We need to find a way to do all we can to help. We can&#8217;t accept defeat. We can&#8217;t justify doing little or nothing.</p><p>It&#8217;s not an easy fix and any program would never have a high success rate.</p><p>But we must try.</p><p>Read the Times Leader story this week written by Pat Kernan. Look at the pictures taken by Aimee Dilger.</p><p>And then tell me these people &#8212; these human beings &#8212; don&#8217;t deserve more from a compassionate community.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Bill O&#8217;Boyle </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/web1_Columnshot-5-.jpg</photo0><caption0>Bill O&#8217;Boyle </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Bill O&#8217;Boyle</p><p>boboyle@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Bill O&#8217;Boyle at 570-991-6118 or on Twitter @TLBillOBoyle, or email at boboyle@www.timesleader.com.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Beyond the Byline: We need to do more to help the homeless