Booted from Starbucks

The headline of this article.

The 70-year-old Lisle woman was kicked out of the Starbucks in downtown Glen Ellyn a few weeks ago. She claims it was because employees mistook her as a homeless person, part of a purge the store waged to mollify customers who complained that the coffee shop was overrun with the homeless.
…
When Kilborn refused to leave, police officers responded to make sure she left.

By the time it was over, Kilborn recalls standing outside the Starbucks – fuming.

“I had my coffee in my hand,” she said. “It’s still too hot to drink – that’s how little time passed.”
…
Kilborn says the public needs to learn a little more tolerance.

“People shouldn’t be told to leave after buying a cup of coffee,” she said. “No one should be humiliated like that.”

“Homelessness isn’t just restricted to one county,” said Debbie DeGraw, director of marketing and development for McHenry County PADS.

“It’s an issue for everyone to deal with,” she said. “Yet people are like, ‘not in my backyard.’ Nobody wants it in their communities.”

That’s just human nature.

Legal experts say a public business ordinarily can’t refuse service to anyone. But if a customer is making others uncomfortable, a merchant can ask that person to leave.

However, advocates note, the homeless have rights, too.

When I read the article I just felt compelled to say something about it. Tolerance, our rights and our neighbours. All of us are selfish: we want our space, our rights, our way. It’s human nature. We are taught to share our toys not keep them to ourselves. I’ve heard the phrase “sharing is caring” and in the most part it is true. In a sense optimal benefit is obtained when we share. But our inner most being wants things our way, forgetting that the things or people preventing us from getting our own way are not much different that we are. They are just another human being on this Earth, just like you.

Differences are easy to point out and easy to be used as excuses to not like another person, to ostracize them. Why can’t we all just get along. “Love your neighbour as yourself“: That was what I was reminded as I read the article. Even though you don’t see homeless people in Brunei (which I thank God for, not because that I don’t want to see them, but at least it means there are not that many, if any, suffering with the problem here) the article just reminded me of what am I doing to help out another fellow man. No matter how much you do it can never be enough. Just like the story of a man on a beach full of starfish washed ashore and throwing some back in. It makes a difference to those thrown back in. And in the story, parallels will life can be drawn: some of those starfish will just die out there without anybody to help them. Lost and alone without anybody being there for them.

So as I leave this thought for myself and hopefully anybody else:
Love your neighbour as yourself

Matthew 22:36 – 39
³⁶Master, which is the great commandment in the Law? ³⁷ Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the first and great commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.