Jon Owen, the 431st person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, told me there’s a proverb he’s been thinking deeply about recently – where you stand determines what you see.

As a pastor at, and the CEO of, the Wayside Chapel, Jon mixes with a wide cross-section of society, from homeless people to wealthy donors. The different life experiences and social statuses of these groups influences how they see the world; and how the world sees them.

Unfortunately, people who live rough often have very low self-worth and are often scorned by others. 

Jon says there are two main reasons why people become homeless – they’ve experienced a childhood trauma or a decline in their mental health. The role of volunteers is not to fix people in that situation, Jon says, because that’s both patronising and impossible. Rather, it’s to make them feel heard.

Jon has spent three decades in social work, but his life could have turned out very differently. He studied biomedical engineering at university – because his mum suggested it, rather than because he was interested in it – and would probably have ended up making prosthetic limbs for a living if he’d completed the degree. But with one year left to go, he decided to take a gap year, to figure out what he wanted from life. As part of the process, Jon did volunteer social work – and immediately felt he’d found his calling. Later, he returned to uni to study social work.

When Jon was growing up, he was often subjected to racial prejudice, which made him wish that, one day, he would have enough money and status to insulate himself from the world. But since becoming a social worker, Jon has striven instead to become someone who’s motivated by service and who doesn’t compare himself to others. 

To put it another way, Jon has consciously chosen to stand in a different place, so he can see different things.