To the editor:

Are the homeless lazy? Stigma or truth? What is the cause? If you were not raised with a work ethic, how do you develop this? The parents you get are the luck of the draw. Lazy parents produce lazy children. Some homeless have inherited a mental illness for which they are no more to blame than if they inherited cancer. Everyone must be willing to learn and ask for help. Associate with those who encourage you to seek that help and commitment to a better future.

Some homeless don’t think it is worthwhile to try and be in maximum condition for a minimum existence. Like the moth that evolved a method to jam the bat’s sonar and thus survive, so it is with the homeless. One such coping mechanism is to think something is a deadly insult when it was not meant to be. Living on the defensive and always expecting to be insulted or being embarrassed by having to ask a stranger for money can lead to aggressive behavior. Some of the homeless deal with it by essentially opting out of the human race, reducing contact to the barest minimum.

I do understand that those who work hard every day can get angry at the homeless because they think they are pampered. Believe me, they are not. In a world of increasing hostility, all of us need to be mindful of the example set by our president to stay cool under fire and focused on the issue at hand.