Day 129

First day of work today. It went well; unions have a certain air of camaraderie to them. And the money is good.

On the way home I stopped by the harbour to take in some of the ocean breeze. A girl my age approached me candidly with a a request that I listen to a pitch about why I should donate to a cause. "Have you got a moment for Unicef?" she asked.

"Unicef? I'll pass. Thanks anyway." My response was polite, but terse. She was a very pretty girl; she had brown hair, no makeup, and an outgoing disposition to her.

About three paces of mine later she called out "Have you got a reason?" In a tone still friendly, but also more honest and forward than one would ever expect from a stranger, even a solicitor. I was taken aback on account of this, and on account of the fact that I take pride in having real reasons for the things that I do (even if the reasons are bad, self-awareness counts for something). So I turned around and walked back a pace.

"Yes. I'm a selfish person, that's the reason. I want to keep my money more than I want to give it to other people, even if they are starving." I owed her the return favour of equal honesty. She smiled, and having taken the cue that I wasn't afraid of criticism, she responded "You know that's a pretty shitty reason."

"It's a perfectly good reason. It is a pretty shitty justification, however."

"Well, thanks for your honesty. People usually just tell me they can't afford it."

"...We all know that's never true in a place like this."

"Exactly."

Another smile was exchanged, and I departed.

Truth be told, my only regret wasn't not donating, but was the fact I didn't ask for her number. She was exactly my type. The odds she'd have given it to me were nearly nil, which is fine, but there are few things I regret more in life than when my lack of confidence prevents me from taking a free bet on a great prize.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I think that these "NGOs", Uniceft, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, purposefully recruit good-looking left-wing liberals to be there canvassers to lure us young people into approaching them. A few months ago, I was approached by a Greenpeace canvasser who was just MY type, tall, dark, handsome, a backpacking wanderer, holder of a philosophy degree via U of T. I managed to get up to personal chatting for a good 45 minutes, eventually signed up for a 25$/month package (at the time, I agreed with a lot of the principles of Greenpeace and was a raging environmentalist looking for a method of putting my money where my mouth is) and just as I had signed my signature did his 'mysterious' girlfriend come up which had before then not been mentioned one bit. God damnit.
10:25 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 58

I do fear, sometimes, that the act of pondering aloud has become a cathartic experience and nothing more . It is hard in this town to find a diversity of thought, because we've all been raised in very similar ways with the same norms, experiences, and conventions. I find that the mightiest opinions of some of the the twentysomethings I know are so damningly narrow that they cannot possibly stand to the slightest breeze of doubt. Often the biggest theory is the thinnest. Our shadows grow long and starved moments before they disappear under the sunset. The natural world has cursed us with its indifference, its vaccuum of conscience in which deeds neither good nor evil subsist. I find the urge to view our species of conscious and conscientious beings as alien. It is as though the world we inhabit was never intended for us to inhabit it. In short, this town is a box. This country, political system, individualistic ideology, humanist dogma, faux rebellion against imagined authority; it ...
Read more

Day 212

It is very true that the best people in the world at any discipline, skill, sport, instrument (etc). are never particularly well-rounded people. There should be, as my grandma mentioned over dinner last night, a competition for "well-roundedness" with international competitors. In order to win you'd have to be physically capable, perhaps musical and mathematical, moral and charitable, very learned, and so forth. And that's the interesting thing, the jacks of all trades get absolutely no attention from the peanut gallery. But on the contrary, they typically have the healthiest and happiest and most fulfilling of lives. I can't tell you how many young pianists I've met, for whom piano was the sole self-measure of pride and value. And, like all people who have themselves judged for one thing, they are utterly miserable, feeling highs and lows that appear and fade as quickly as do the passing opinions of strangers. --- On a tangent: some of the most miserable girl...
Read more

Day 168

You hear non-religious people say it all the time: "If only there was a God! That would honestly be great, if there was a supreme moral arbier in the universe looking out for my every action and running the universe with me in mind. It's really too bad there isn't." I used to say that, until I came across a few authors who vehemently claim that such a wish is, in reality, a wish for slavery. When we ask for the comfort of a god (or fantasize for it anyway) were asking for a kind of absolution that only the slave can have. And the price for that is extremely high. And still, there times when I do wish I were this sort of slave, though I no longer say so with a smile.
Read more