Feel-bad Librarian

Sometimes I get tired of this job. I get tired of being asked a lot of the same questions. I get tired of driving a half hour to work. I get tired of parents doing their kids' homework. I get tired of unsupervised kids running from floor to floor. I get tired of power struggles within the ranks.

Most of all, I am tired of the suffering. I get tired of seeing poor people who never seem to be able to get ahead. I get tired of people who are mentally on the edge, who have to be approached as though they are ticking time bombs.

A man wanted to sign up for the internet. Simple enough. I needed his ID. He didn’t have any – his wallet had been stolen. He told me his name and I couldn’t understand him because his lip was swollen and bleeding. He was riding his bike in the slush, because his car had also been stolen, and he fell and his face hit the curb. He was trying to email a relative for help. His unemployment had run out, he lost his bed at the shelter and he needed a place to stay.

Now all the books on the new shelf tell me that somehow this man has brought this on himself. The new age books say he must have a negative attitude and be making bad choices. The business books say he isn’t marketing his skills properly. The religion books say he must have caused someone else pain, so he is getting it in return. The psychology books say he isn’t focusing on his strengths. The right-wing books say he needs to pull himself up by the bootstraps; the left-wing books say he needs more public funding.

The books could be right. He could be making bad choices and have a bad attitude. He could be a real abuser. He could be a slacker at work. He could have no marketable skills at all. He could be psychotic. He could need to exert more effort and he might need more funding. He could be lying through his broken teeth.

What I want to know is - where is the real answer? For crying out loud, I am in a building full of information. I have links to the greatest educational and research institutions in the world at my fingertips. I have a master’s degree myself.

There are all the usual social services available in my town. There are shelters and rehab centers and the United Religious Community. There is Catholic Social Services, health clinics and psychological counseling centers. There is WorkOne and Workforce Development.

Why is this man’s life like this?

I have had hard times. They seem pretty minor compared to his. I’ve had health problems, my folks split when I was 9, my brother-in-law was killed at 35, one of our children was born when we were without health insurance and had to be charged on a Visa card. I’ve had to eat the same thing day after day because I couldn’t afford to buy anything else.  But they didn’t happen all at once, and not to the very edge of poverty and survival.

I know nothing about this man, except that he showed up in front of me on a Sunday afternoon, and there was nothing I could do for him except listen, be kind and help him get on the internet. My feel-good self says that I did all I could, I listened to him, treated him with respect, sympathized with his troubles and gave him the help that was within my circle of influence to give. But I felt helpless, as though my skills were worthless and what I did would not be enough.

I’m tired of that.

Comments

[Fiona Tulk]

The only thing that you could have done was to give him the space to speak and hear him without judgement ... give him the information he needed to use the Internet ...and give him your time.

You will never know and its not necessary to know ...but you may have saved his life.

The compassion you showed, for me, is the essence of the job and is at the heart of the profession but is not mentioned much in the literature! Plenty of nomenclature!!

[iman]

very deep thought.

Nice to find another librarian blog. I am a librarian too from Indonesia.