Thanks for the dignity!

It is completely reasonable to be without food money. Toronto's a pretty cheap city to live in, but still - everything's getting more expensive except your paycheque. Even with NoFrills and Price Chopper, feeding oneself is pricey. Most people, when money's tight, will compromise their diet to the point where it drags their life down. But not me. I will gladly accept the help that's offered so that I can keep my head straight and continue to work my way back to... ugh... the grocery store.

During the course of authoring this website, I have alternated several times between being absolutely broke with loads of time on my hands, and having tons of cash and a full-time job, and no time to cook my own food. Between the two, I've been healthier during my unemployed periods, because I've had the time to either cook for myself when I can find food money, or access soup kitchen food which is heartier (and often tastier) than Toronto restaurant food.

Aside from staying healthy, there's another benefit to having access to reliable meal programs: it offers a degree of independence. I don't have to worry about food. I don't have to hope for sympathetic friends to feed me. I can just say "oh yeah, I'm on my way to dinner" and it's true, motherfucker. "I just came from a great lunch - and hey, I grabbed you some brownies, want one?"

It's ironic to find being dependent on meal programs liberating - after all, real independence is being able to provide your own money for your own food, right? Well the thing is, if we were any good, as a nation, at implementing capitalism, that would add up. But we don't get real independence in this country. We don't get the opportunity to maximize our potential. If we did, nobody would run out of food money. We get poisoned from birth by a government desperate to prove how unimportant public health can possibly be, an educational system designed to isolate and disempower us, and a mental health system with a pathetic success rate (the mennonites did four times better than the DSM-4).

Canadians are fucked from the start: we're supposed to eat as much wheat, dairy, sugar and plastics as we possibly can, drink as much fluoride and chlorine as they can pack into the water, we're supposed to breathe exhaust every day and night, and see ourselves in the context of our job, our gender and our education. If you're a man with no job and a poor education, in Canada, in 2010, it's not easy to feel alive because you're the problem, you're not useful, and you're not worth talking to. Thanks to our meal programs, Toronto's poorest men do have one thing going for them: they can keep themselves alive and redefine what it means to be a valuable person: A kind, thoughtful problem-solver that everyone wants to talk to.

Fortunately, a certain group of people (Toronto's Christians, bless them) have gotten one thing right: empowerment of one's fellow person. Either that or it could be the most noble evangelism ever. It is kind of inspiring: "Come on into our holy room, have some food. Christ has taught us compassion."

So remember - when we make use of what's offered us, in a kind and respectful way, it doesn't somehow use up Toronto's store of goodwill. It increases it. Good will is contagious. Graciously accepting help cultivates self-respect, something that nobody can buy. Caring for oneself, really treating ourselves well, makes a huge difference in how we treat others, and how effective we are at getting back on track, whatever that means.