Look at your life
Okay, I didn't really answer the door; I just stood next to my barking dog, shook my head and mouthed no while waving my hand to go away.
Yet another needy supplicant disappointed in their efforts to get a little bit of my spare change for their worthy cause.
Talk about being mean-spirited, talk about being conflicted, talk about wrestling with alternating waves of guilt, remorse and annoyance.
Earlier in the day I had, as usual for a Sunday, given away $4 to a couple of guys who regularly ask for change in my neighbourhood, so it wasn't the money or the idea that I should share my wealth that prompted this reaction.
No, here's what was whipping my head back and forth in the should-I-or-shouldn't-I dilemma: the contradictory signals we send out about when and where it is okay to ask for money and when and how it is okay to decide to give or not.
How do I help people?
Somehow it seems acceptable and appro priate for organized charities, using telemarketing firms that sometimes hand over a low percentage of their ta ke, to call me day and night at home to plead, cajole or demand that I prove my worth as a decent individual.
But the guy sitting at the subway entrance who asks for spare change and greets refusal with "You have a nice day anyway" gets hit with a ticket for doing so.
When the kidney, cancer, diabetes (juvenile or otherwise) and lung societies suggest that I help, they enlist a neighbour on the theory that I'll be too ashamed to reject their pleas and, admittedly, it sometimes works.
But when the same groups offer me a chance to win a dream home, a million in cash or thousands of other prizes I am supposed to respond on a different level entirely.
Sometimes people want to embarrass me into being altruistic, other times they want to appeal to the most venal element possible: charity through greed.
I understand the quandary the seekers of alms face. They are competing, often on the noblest of grounds, for scarce acts of charity.
When I read that politicians and civic boosters are keen to ban panhandling to not expose tourists to something unpleasant, something that might lead them to vacation elsewhere, I am left feeling ashamed, confused and wondering: When was it that tourists became more important than the least among us?
When news breaks of beggars apparently assaulting folk who simply decline to donate or don't donate enough, I am left feeling bewildered, provoked and wondering: When was it that the society of entitlement we live in extended to the point where some feel entitled to my charity and are justly provoked when it is not offered, or worse, declined.
The real society
The reality is that we seem to have become so perplexed by the mixed messages we send about common good, self-reliance, brotherhood and individualism that we've lost any agreed-upon and common understanding of what we owe to whom and why.
Sometimes my whirl of mixed emotions and intellectual angst is simply a reaction to the sheer weight of the need that we are all confronted with every day.
Health, social and personal difficulties and tragedies are delivered constantly and often in the most moving of depictions. And thinking too long and hard about the scope and variety of the problems needing resolution can be shattering.
So What Should We Do?
So what's a person to do? The only thing one can do: Acknowledge that feeling and being charitable is as much dependant on my mood and what is going on in my life as it is on the degree, kind, quality and worthiness of the cause.
Sometimes I care and act. Sometimes I care and don't act. Sometimes I simply don't care. And when I don't care, it really isn't about you, your cause or your need.
When I don't care it's in the truest sense of the phrase "It's personal." It's about me. And what I am struggling to learn is that sometimes I need to be charitable toward myself when I am not feeling charitable.
So let me apologize for not really answering the door. I was distracted. The dog was annoyed. I had just finished reading yet another horror story from a part of the world I can't even locate on a map, let alone think of some way to be helpful to.
You picked a bad time to ask. I had a lot of lousy reasons for not responding. We are both going to have to accept that. Right now, I am trying to learn how.
Okay, I didn't really answer the door; I just stood next to my barking dog, shook my head and mouthed no while waving my hand to go away.
Yet another needy supplicant disappointed in their efforts to get a little bit of my spare change for their worthy cause.
Talk about being mean-spirited, talk about being conflicted, talk about wrestling with alternating waves of guilt, remorse and annoyance.
Earlier in the day I had, as usual for a Sunday, given away $4 to a couple of guys who regularly ask for change in my neighbourhood, so it wasn't the money or the idea that I should share my wealth that prompted this reaction.
No, here's what was whipping my head back and forth in the should-I-or-shouldn't-I dilemma: the contradictory signals we send out about when and where it is okay to ask for money and when and how it is okay to decide to give or not.
How do I help people?
Somehow it seems acceptable and appro priate for organized charities, using telemarketing firms that sometimes hand over a low percentage of their ta ke, to call me day and night at home to plead, cajole or demand that I prove my worth as a decent individual.
But the guy sitting at the subway entrance who asks for spare change and greets refusal with "You have a nice day anyway" gets hit with a ticket for doing so.
When the kidney, cancer, diabetes (juvenile or otherwise) and lung societies suggest that I help, they enlist a neighbour on the theory that I'll be too ashamed to reject their pleas and, admittedly, it sometimes works.
But when the same groups offer me a chance to win a dream home, a million in cash or thousands of other prizes I am supposed to respond on a different level entirely.
Sometimes people want to embarrass me into being altruistic, other times they want to appeal to the most venal element possible: charity through greed.
I understand the quandary the seekers of alms face. They are competing, often on the noblest of grounds, for scarce acts of charity.
When I read that politicians and civic boosters are keen to ban panhandling to not expose tourists to something unpleasant, something that might lead them to vacation elsewhere, I am left feeling ashamed, confused and wondering: When was it that tourists became more important than the least among us?
When news breaks of beggars apparently assaulting folk who simply decline to donate or don't donate enough, I am left feeling bewildered, provoked and wondering: When was it that the society of entitlement we live in extended to the point where some feel entitled to my charity and are justly provoked when it is not offered, or worse, declined.
The real society
The reality is that we seem to have become so perplexed by the mixed messages we send about common good, self-reliance, brotherhood and individualism that we've lost any agreed-upon and common understanding of what we owe to whom and why.
Sometimes my whirl of mixed emotions and intellectual angst is simply a reaction to the sheer weight of the need that we are all confronted with every day.
Health, social and personal difficulties and tragedies are delivered constantly and often in the most moving of depictions. And thinking too long and hard about the scope and variety of the problems needing resolution can be shattering.
So What Should We Do?
So what's a person to do? The only thing one can do: Acknowledge that feeling and being charitable is as much dependant on my mood and what is going on in my life as it is on the degree, kind, quality and worthiness of the cause.
Sometimes I care and act. Sometimes I care and don't act. Sometimes I simply don't care. And when I don't care, it really isn't about you, your cause or your need.
When I don't care it's in the truest sense of the phrase "It's personal." It's about me. And what I am struggling to learn is that sometimes I need to be charitable toward myself when I am not feeling charitable.
So let me apologize for not really answering the door. I was distracted. The dog was annoyed. I had just finished reading yet another horror story from a part of the world I can't even locate on a map, let alone think of some way to be helpful to.
You picked a bad time to ask. I had a lot of lousy reasons for not responding. We are both going to have to accept that. Right now, I am trying to learn how.