What Weighs The Most

Last Tuesday, someone asked me the question I’ve been asked a hundred times before: “What should I do?” We were standing outside the op shop, and the weight of their situation—housing, health, and having to arrange advanced care directives for the parent who hurt and abandoned them three decades ago—hung between us like a fog. I didn’t have an answer, not a real one, anyway. What I had was time to stand there with him, holding the weight of these burdens together.

There’s a study that just came out in which Gallup asked people in 52 countries what they need most from the leaders in their lives. Not politicians or CEOs necessarily, but the people who actually influence their daily existence. The results showed that for more than half of the respondents, what they want most is hope. Not trust, not compassion, not stability— but hope. While the other things matter of course, hope outweighs everything else combined.

I keep thinking about that poll because it lines up with what we see here. People don’t really walk through our doors looking for a five-point plan. They’re looking for reasons that tomorrow might be different from today, that there’s something worth sticking around for.

Sometimes the most radical thing we can do is show up and stay—not with solutions in our pockets, but with our full attention. People don’t need us to fix them, they need us to see as much of them as we can, not just the parts they display to survive their current circumstances.

That Gallup study names family members and managers as the most common sources of positive leadership, but at Wayside, leadership looks different. It’s the old blokes in the community cafe who remember everyone’s story and never make them feel small for needing help. It’s the volunteer at the op shop who treats every customer like they matter, no matter their budget. It’s people in recovery who show up for others still struggling, not because they have all the answers but because they remember what it felt like to need hope and finding it in someone who stayed.

The research found that stability only accounts for 4% of what people want from leaders. Though when you’re working with people facing homelessness, mental health crises, and systems that keep failing them, that 4% carries the weight of the world. You can’t just offer hope when someone doesn’t know where they’re sleeping tonight because hope without any pathway to stability starts to feel cruel.

They don’t arrive separately—hope, trust, compassion, stability. They are borne through relationship, through the quiet work of showing up again and again. The person who provides hope is often the same person who’s building trust by not disappearing when things get hard. Compassion isn’t a separate program, it’s what happens when we stop treating people as problems to solve.

My friend outside the op shop came back yesterday, and we stood there again. Sometimes that’s the work—being the person who shows up, who stays, who holds space for hope even when the answers aren’t clear. He was a little bleary eyed from the previous night, and in between deep draws of his ‘street blend’ rollie, he attempted to mouth an apology, but considering the weight of what he was facing I just raised my hand, and with no words, we embraced. Then we shared a bacon & egg roll the size of a dinner plate from Wayside’s community cafe as we sat in the beautiful morning sunshine and faced another day together.

Thank you for being part of the Inner Circle,