“How can I do this?” – was my first question. Fund-raise in the same streets with people who are asking for money to eat? How can I put a smile on my face, ask for money for my travel to Africa and “forget” that other beggars need to survive here and need to feed their children? And the artists? And about those street musicians who play all the day trying to earn money too? Should I be in the same streets with them? … because they have their own fight too. “How can I do this?”
It was not easy to find an answer to my question and, in fact, I don’t know if I already have a proper answer, but, day by day, I start to realize I can help these persons too; not too much and not every day, but I can do my part to help them.
Help these persons, when I can, is the way I found to fight against all these conscience problems and these doubts.
Sometimes, I stop and I start talking with them or give them some cookies or fruit. Other times, I decided to help with money too: I put my hand in my “money bag” and the first coin I find is the coin I give. And they say thank you, they wish me good luck and they smile to me. This little attitude makes my day better and my conscience (more) clear.
I know the altruism is, in fact, all about being selfish and the human beings only help each other because of their own conscience and moral. That can be true and maybe I am a selfish person trying to find a way to not feel bad, but I still think it is a good way to be selfish and I am pretty sure I will not change it.
One of the most interesting things about the human-beings is the way we adapt to different environments. In the beginning, we feel strange and uncomfortable. Everything is different and unknown for us. But after a while we get used and this difference gets normal. This ability to adapt is a beautiful power, but it is very tricky. Some persons walk by these beggars (and walk by me too) and completely avoid us, and this is a quite new feeling for me: some persons see me walking, with my money bag and my postcards, saying hello and, sometimes, they didn’t answer. They are too much used to seeing people asking for money on the streets, they don’t care and don’t want to listen anymore; they don’t want to know what I need the money for, what I am doing, why I am doing… I concluded a very curious fact: it is very difficult to find a rich person who wants to help us. In general, persons with too much money never seem available to talk.
So, “Why?” was my second question. Why persons with money don’t want to help persons without money? Why they avoid the poverty around them? Why they don’t feel compassion or even love for a mother sitting on the floor with a cup in front, with few coins? Why do they refuse to see this other reality?
One more time, I don’t have any proper answer, but I think they don’t know how to deal with people with no food or house, and they don’t know because, for them, this reality is very far away (and so close!), and it is far away because they never pass by the same situation and they never give to these persons few seconds to understand what is happening in their lives. They don’t have the time because they have the money, and “time is money” (?).
Of course, I don’t want to make any stereotypes or any stupid conclusions about rich persons, but, for my experience, I can say the poor persons are quite more rich inside and they, all the day, seem available to give time for another person. Either because they feel this compassion or either because they know what it is to be in the same condition. They have the time to stop in the middle of the street and to talk about my travel to Africa. They are not poor! They simply don’t have any money.
When you talk with random strangers, you can find everything. You can find a rich person who can tell you “I only have credit card”, you can find a drug addict, who tells you “all my money is for drugs”, you can find a person who tells you “I don’t believe in you” or a person who tells you “I don’t like Africa” but, in these days, I realized it is always possible to find more good persons than bad persons. You only need to try, to try a lot, to try too much, but it is always possible! It is even possible to feel, who will give you the time and who will not. But, of course, it is not that easy to feel, who will give you the money.
Sometimes, I walk a lot to find a “time donor” and I get really tired when I pass, for example, thirty minutes without finding them. After these thirty minutes/one hour, I stop. I sit down somewhere, smoke a “thoughtful cigarette”, and then I try again.
When I find a good person, who gives me the time and the money, I get more motivated and, when you are motivated and with good energies, it is easier to find more good persons.
It is like a circle. A circle that you don’t understand how you get in and you don’t understand how can you get out of.
Fund-raising is a hard job, I may say, and until now I didn’t understand, if it is the best way to be free or the worst way of parasitism.
Freedom, because you decided your way to work and you can use all of your creativity, you can choose your own hours to work and you can choose the place where you want to work. You may have the entire world to do it.
Parasitism because you are asking for persons to give you the money they earned with their own jobs, and you are asking for the time they probably don’t really have. You are completely dependent of their decision.
All the time I spend on the streets I feel like a relief. I am not stopped, I am alive, I am seeing other persons, I am listening to other points of view. All the persons are like a mystery inside and I dare to say: we all have something beautiful inside! I really like to talk with strangers, I like to see their reaction when I say hello, I like when they stop to talk with me even when I don’t say nothing, I like to talk with all kinds of persons, mainly when they seem very different comparing with myself. I like to give them my time, my opinion, my way to see the world. I like to give them an explanation about what I am doing. I like to sit on the floor with a homeless man or even on a bench, in a beautiful garden, with a rich business man. I like to give them what I can give, my food, my time, my money or my ideas. And I like to say thank you in the end.
In fact, I like to fund-raise. And the money is only a huge bonus I earn.
My third question is: “Am I contributing for a better world?”
The End
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