Sometimes We Do Things Just to Feel Better About Ourselves, But They Are Still Good Things to Do

The Encounter

The grocery store was about to close; I stopped by quickly to buy some frozen blueberries. On the way in, a woman crouching on the pavement near the entrance said something to me. Of course I knew she was asking for money, but I did not hear her exact words, so I walked closer to her and asked her to please repeat herself, adding that I don’t hear well.

She offered a brave, shaky smile as she asked me (a second time) if I could spare some change. 

I believe her clothing was black. Her face was – mottled? blemished? pocked? Something was awry with her face in the way that people’s faces get when they’ve been traumatized and/or cut off from elemental resources. Otherwise, she might have been pretty. I would wildly estimate that she was about 40 years old. And maybe she was holding a cigarette, though not smoking in the moment. I don’t recall clearly. It was dark.

I gave her a dollar, she thanked me, and I wished her good luck and proceeded into the store. 

I was only in there for a few minutes, but she hailed me again on my way out, asking for change. 

“I gave you a dollar on my way in,” I reminded her gently.

“Might you by any chance have another one?” she ventured shakily.

Something in me contracted. I’d already given her a dollar, and I’d bought a copy of Street Roots from a vendor that evening, and I’d treated a friend, who’s been having a difficult time lately, to dinner just a few hours earlier. And I’ve been experiencing “heavy money issues” myself.

So I determined that I’d been generous enough already. Given my own challenges, I’d hit my upper limit for the day. 

To her question, I responded: “I do, but I’m feeling like I better keep it.”

She summoned another of her tragic, pained but friendly smiles and said, “Okay. Thank you. Have a good night.”

(For the record, I did have a few more singles in my wallet, as well as some larger bills.)

The Pinch

Later that night, I took a walk and as I thought back to that interaction, something felt wrong. 

It’s not that I chronically feel as if I really should give all my money away to anyone needier than myself, or to anyone who asks, but something was struggling to come to the surface of my mind. At first it was only a feeling. A kind of pinched feeling in the area of my heart.

Then it became clear. A simple, obvious perception that I’d suppressed earlier:

She was cold.

Now of course, not everyone who asks for money on the street is strictly shelterless. People scrounge by in a wide variety of marginal makeshift ways – sleeping in tents or homeless shelters or crappy subsidized one-room apartments, for example.

But this woman who’d called to me and asked for change had been crouching, her shoulders hunched, because she was cold. 

Her clothing, whatever it was, was inadequate to the night’s weather. 

I, in my four layers, had not allowed this detail to penetrate my consciousness, but now, hours later, I was feeling it, the reality that my eyes had seen plainly: the unambiguous fact that she was cold.

A second dollar from me could not have changed that, though it might have made her feel a bit warmer emotionally, if only for a moment or two.

Speaking of Cold People …

JD Vance is a scumbag but not everything he says is utter bullshit. He gave some America-first-themed speech recently in which he asserted that we have to prioritize whom we care about (I’m paraphrasing), beginning with our family and then friends and neighbors, and then our country, and so on. His point was that we have to take care of our own before we worry too much about “the other,” much less “others” from different countries.

I read an eloquent essay online by someone who pointed out that Vance’s statement starkly contradicts the teachings of Jesus Christ, who insisted that we must love everyone completely, including our enemies. 

But, you know, for practical purposes, I think Vance was onto something. I think unless you’re Gandhi or Jesus or the Great Mother or one of that gang (or you’re in the midst of a very strong plant medicine experience), it’s not really possible to love everyone because “everyone” is an abstraction. I think it’s only human to empathize more readily with the people immediately in front of us. And I think that has to be the first step, for most of us anyway, before we can open our hearts to the whole of humanity (or to all sentient beings even, if you’re a Buddhist).

As for Vance, like I say, I deem him scummy and sleazy, but I also think he’s too intelligent to not be making himself sick day in and day out with all the ways he is groveling and gaslighting for Trump. He’s about to be a new father again for the fourth time, so maybe if his heart has some semblance of life left, it will be touched. But I digress …

The Point (Of Course)

The thing is, if I’d allowed myself in the moment to know consciously that the woman was cold – and the night would only get colder – and she truly may not have had any shelter to retreat to – I think I would have given her that second dollar. Which probably would not have hurt me in the long run (of course not). But some “self-protective” mechanism in me threw down a false wall between us. 

The emotion I felt upon seeing this clearly was more grief than guilt. My heart grieved for the woman and her brave, broken little smile. 

In the moment I refused her that second dollar, I was actually in a little hurry to get back to my car, because it was chilly. 

So What Can I Do?

Then I had a thought that relieved some of my grief. A solution of sorts.

I could start giving away blankets to homeless people for the next month or so, until the weather warms. I could keep a few blankets in my car at all times, to give out to people who are obviously stranded in the cold at night, like that woman.

I could google “cheap heavy blankets” or something like that. I’d have to spend a bit of money but … okay. (A friend suggested I could also ask my friends if they had any spare blankets they could donate. Good idea. And I guess I could also post this whole idea of giving away blankets on Facebook too – why not?)

So I felt better then. I could do this. I could “make up for” my earlier insensitivity. More good than harm would come from this episode. More care would blossom, and I’d be part of the blossoming. I would feel back in the flow of the loving universe that I want so desperately to believe in. 

Obviously I’m doing this for myself. But I think that’s okay. It’s still a good thing to do, even if motivated by self-interest. There’s a point at which the distinction between self-interest and caring for others breaks down and becomes meaningless, and where thinking about it too much won’t clarify anything.

I will say though that I think it’s an incremental process, and in that sense I kinda get what Vance was saying.