Slaying Apathy

We can't help but stare need in the face. And I must admit that sometimes it is tiring. It's tiring looking like the rich man in a poor country. Tiring being the rich man in a poor country.

And sometimes that fatigue crosses the line into the deadly territory of apathy.

I briefly stumbled across that line yesterday.

A young man stopped me on the side of the road and asked for some food. "I don't need money," he said, "I'm hungry. I have AIDS, and I take free anti-retrovirals from Doctors Without Borders, but I don't have food."

He pulled out a card that documents his illness, but the proof was in his sunken, hollowed out face. He was definitely ill.

And yet that little fraud-busting voice whispered a protest in my head. The one that is well-atuned to scams in Canada. The one that has decided that every story I hear on the street is spun in an effort to rip me off.

I nearly walked away. I even told him that I hadn't anything for him.

I could have walked away. I could have gone home, emptied my pockets of my coins and stacked them on my bedroom dresser where they would sit unused. I could have spent an extra ten minutes sitting at my computer working on well-intentioned micro-enterprise something-or-other, theorizing about how I could improve the lives of those unfortunate people around me.

Or, just as likely, I could have used the time to read one more article in today's newspaper.

But then who would have helped him?

Fortunately for that young man, my apathy was washed away by a shower of better judgment. How can you sit comfortably in your office and make plans for rescuing these people if you won't even look this man in the eye and offer him the assistance he's requesting?

That was the voice of God. I could nearly feel His hand reaching down from the heavens and grabbing me by the shirt collar.

It's not like I don't do anything, I protested. Isn't that why I'm here? Earlier this week I even bought a bushel of bananas just to leave beside the garbage dumpster so that the scavengers would have a decent meal. I'm doing good, aren't I?

I didn't need to ask this man what consolation it would be to him that I had helped someone else another day. He needed my help right then, and I was able to provide it. Perhaps I had to modify my schedule a little, and perhaps there would even be a moment or two of discomfort, but it was my turn to help.

Ok, I'll help, I conceded to my better judgment.

We walked together to a supermarket to purchase some food staples. Inside, the ghost of a man gathered enough strength to pick up a large bag of flour. The kind that is made of burlap so that it doesn't split open and spill its contents all over the aisle of the store. Large enough to feed him for a month, he told me.

We agreed on a smaller bag of flour, and added a bag of beans, and a bottle of cooking oil. If the large bag of flour would have fed him for a month, our new purchases should feed him for a week, but I think that exaggerates the quantity of my help. He would make it last a week, is more likely.

Something rose up within me today to slay the apathy that I felt. It's not being too dramatic to suggest that had it not been defeated, my apathy could very possibly have slayed this young man.

And I would have had an extra $4 on my dresser, and an additional ten minutes to put my feet up in the comfort of my padlocked apartment.