AKA
The Karma Project
After my television interview, it wasn’t raining anymore so I decided to walk back to the Port Authority. I was thinking about the whole umbrella incident and trying to get to the bottom of why I had done nothing and just let that poor guy get soaked.
I had no answers. I just pledged to myself that I would never be so selfish again.
Then I walked by a panhandler. Panhandlers used to be a rare occurrence in New York City, especially when Rudy Giuliani was mayor and arrested people for doing it. But Giuliani is no longer mayor, so the panhandlers have been slowly making a greater and greater presence—and some of them are downright belligerent.
Still, I’ve been attempting to become a more generous person (not that you would know by my inability to share my umbrella), so I’ve put a lot of thought into how I want to respond to panhandlers. I realize I can’t give money to every single one of them. So my strategy is to give whatever happens to be in my wallet to one of them. This might seem extreme, but it might ease your mind to know that I rarely have much cash on me to begin with.
So I see this panhandler. I mean, I couldn’t miss the guy. As people walked past, he shouted, “Sir! Can you help me out?” and “Miss! Can you help me out?”
I slowed my pace, getting reading to pull my wallet out of my bag. Then suddenly I remembered that my daughter had taken all of the cash (all four dollars of it) out of my wallet that morning so she would have money to buy something at her school’s book fair. She’d even taken all of my loose change.
Perhaps it was my guilt over the umbrella incident that caused me to feel the need to explain myself. I don’t know.
I smiled, made eye contact, and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t have any cash.”
He said, “Well, that’s not nice! You asshole! Asshole! You’re an asshole!”
I kept walking.
Then the strangest thought came to me. It was this, “Turn around.”
What follows are a series of thoughts that ran through my mind.
Offer to take him to lunch. Tell him that you are sorry, that you don’t have any cash, but that you will charge whatever he wants to eat.
That’s stupid. He just wants money to buy drugs or booze.
That’s not for you to decide. Plus how do you know for sure? At any rate, if you turn around and show him kindness, it could spark a domino effect. This isn’t about money. It’s about kindness.
Look, I would do it, but I’m in a hurry. I need to get home for the parent teacher conference.
Oh, yeah, that’s true. Plus, it’s not like you were attached to the money. You were generous with your daughter this morning. You could have stiffed her, too.
Right. See? I’m not a terrible person!
So I kept walking.
But with each step, I felt more and more like a generosity failure. I just kept thinking that I could have really made a difference. I could have shown him the epitome of love and forgiveness, and that just might have shaken this angry homeless guy to his core and helped him see the world more positively.
Either that or he might have just called me an asshole all day long. It’s anyone’s guess.
At any rate, I again pledged that I would definitely find a way to be generous the next time I was called upon to do so.
