THE PROMISE TO SUPPORT A STRANGER
• I have a friend who has a theory, about grief and heartbreak and the burdens we bear. It goes like this. Duty operates in concentric circles. It pushes out and dissipates. The weight gets lesser with every phase. That’s how we survive. At the centre of every circle, the theory goes, there’s an event. It could be a breakup or a job loss or a death in the family. But whatever it is, it leaves a hole. A gap. A person who needs help. So they lean.
They fall backward into their first circle. Their best friend. Their lover. Their spouse. They take the burden. They offer their support. And when they’re tapped out, when the second-hand sadness becomes too much, they look to the next circle: their friends, their sisters. And they lean.
Outward it goes, from circle to circle, everybody holding what they can. That’s how the weight gets carried. That’s how we survive. For most of us, our circles are our families, the ones we’re born with and the ones we make. But for others, that line is
SEVERAL NEWLY ARRIVED SYRIAN REFUGEES HAVE BEEN SPONSORED BY FAMILY MEMBERS, BUT THOUSANDS MORE WILL COME TO CANADA SPONSORED BY COMPLETE STRANGERS, WHO PLEDGE TIME, MONEY AND ENERGY TO EASE THE TRANSITION
much less clear. In her recent book, Strangers Drowning, Larissa MacFarquhar writes about people for whom the line between family and strangers is a blur. The “do-gooders,” as she calls them, give whatever they can, to whoever needs it most, no matter the cost. They go far beyond charity. They let anybody lean.
That altruism can make us profoundly uncomfortable, MacFarquhar writes. In their fervour to address the inhumane, the do-gooders can often seem somehow unhuman.
But there is another way of blurring that line, another way of substituting stranger for family. It is perhaps less extreme. But in its own way, it is no less different from what we’d normally think of as charity. In Canada, we call it sponsorship. Tens of thousands of Canadians have volunteered to sponsor refugees fleeing Syria. They’ve promised to pay their bills, to find them homes, to ease their passage to this new land.
Sponsorship is not like other charity. It’s not like writing a cheque or serving meals at a soup kitchen. It is a profoundly personal promise.