Good and gone

Why is it so hard to be compassionate when you feel some sense of put-on? Like most people, I hesitate to give money to bums on the street, knowing that whatever they say most likely the money will be used for drugs or alcohol. It seems like the very essence of compassion should be that you love and help and rescue regardless of what the other person is generating emotionally. If they're asking for help, they probably need it, whatever it is that they are actually telling you. My choice is usually to turn people off rather than maneuver through this ethical thicket. My grandma was a really dramatic person, and it was often hard to tell when she was really ill or in danger or in need of help. Every couple of years she would pronounce that she was probably going to die soon, or that something horrible was going on, but somehow the cataclysm never came. I certainly did what I could to help, but after a few tearful panics about losing my grandma, I started feeling wary. When she did eventually get ill and die, it was obvious to all that it was real this time. Yet even still, until she was prostrate in the hospital and moving in and out of consciousness, I had a hard time letting go and really mourning and doing what I could to help.

The thing is, people who cry wolf or drive up the drama even when they are really injured or sick or in need, really do need help. It might just be that they need attention. Or in the case of the bum on the street, I remember a great moment in the sadly departed TV show "Sports Night" (Aaron Sorkin before West Wing) when one of the sports anchors is worrying over this same issue. His boss says "I always give them money. Who are we to decide what it takes to live on the streets? Wouldn't you want a beer? Don't you often need one now?"

Is this an American quality, because we have so many shucksters here? Or is it the opposite, that we are a fundamentally naive and also decent people, who love to help but need the giving to be pure? Every time there's clearcut tragedy, people pour out there hearts and lives. Katrina, 9/11, the tsunami in Asia, people gave blood, raised money, sent clothes, showed up to help. Those very same people (I include myself) would step over a tattered bloody person on their own sidewalk without a second thought. The complexity of helping someone in that state is overwhelming.

On a personal level it is too. People who overdramatize (and lord knows, I probably do to) make it hard to open your heart. I really respect and admire people who just give people whatever they need without question, who give sympathy freely. Or even more amazing are those who ignore the shallower demands and give what's really needed without being bothered by lack of gratitude or attempts to con or anything else. We're such selfish creatures, we need so much to have a narrative arc to our compassion, an arc that leads to a lovely and glittering pot of gratitude. Some day, perhaps I'll scatter compassion around like wildflower seeds, not caring if they sprout when I'm not looking.