This patient, too, knew that he would return to the life he had been leading, whatever we did for him, whatever we offered him. T hese homeless men, then, have made a choice, which one might even dignify as an existential one. The life they have chosen is not without its compensations. These men know, for example, that there are hostels everywhere, in every town and city, that will take them in, feed them, and keep them warm, whatever may happen and whether the market is bullish or bearish. Moreover, they are automatically part of a fraternity quarrelsome and occasionally violent, perhaps, but also tolerant and often amusing.
Illness goes with the territory, but a general hospital is never far away, and treatment is free.
It is difficult for most of us to accept that this way of life, so unattractive on the surface, is freely chosen. Surely, we think, there must be something wrong with those who choose to live like this. Surely they must be suffering from some disease or mental abnormality that accounts for their choice, and therefore we should pity them. Or else, as the social workers who arrive periodically in the hostels believe, all who lodge there are by definition the victims of misfortune not of their own making and quite beyond their control. Society, as represented by social workers, must therefore rescue them.