Weighing the Odds

Food or Booze?

If there was a 90% chance that a homeless person or beggar would use any money I gave her/him for an addiction rather than food... honestly, based on that 10% chance, I’d still give the money. I tend to side more with giving food or drink, whenever possible, but I don’t subscribe to the horrid misconception that “some of those beggars make hundreds of dollars a day.” 

Here’s the thing. 

I think addiction, especially chemical addiction, is a huge problem. But not giving someone money, regardless of what they’ll use it for, isn’t going to stop them from accessing their drug of choice. An individual might steal, might attack, might compromise their own health and safety in order to access their next fix. 

So I guess what I’m getting at is that not giving someone the means to feed themselves or, should they choose, get high, can create a more dangerous situation than the one at hand; going cold-turkey from a chemical dependency without access to detox/withdrawal facilities, especially when one is living on the street or in extremely unsafe/unhygienic conditions puts the individual at risk of various ailments, even death. Furthermore, it would seem to me that someone desperate for a high is going to be much more violent than someone who is high as a kite. 

I’m tempted to look at this from a moral standpoint- to say that it’s their own fault for getting addicted (when, really, how the hell do I know?), that they should get jobs (maybe they can’t, maybe we’re in a horrible recession), or that the individual in question will do fine without- but I guess what it comes down to, for me, is - how the hell do I really know? Even if I could guarantee that there was a 90% chance the money would be spent on drugs and only a 10% chance it would be spent on food, there is that 10% chance- and I guess I’d have to just... hope.

Doing the Impossible

Life's Big Questions: March 8, 2009: What Would You Attempt To Do If You Knew You Would Not Fail?

If I’d answered this question a few weeks ago when I’d initially intended to do so, my response would have been substantially different.

Yes, I’ve been slacking on my posting, but, to be fair, the last few weeks have been a total shit show. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, made a huge mess of things, now I’m going to go out on a limb and take some much-needed chances.

Today is the Pumpkin’s birthday, which means that for the last 7 days I’ve been plotting a whole slough of little surprises and gifts and fun things, including what I guess was actually a surprise party at our weekly coffee/pub night last night.

To be fair, we intended to surprise the kid at midnight, but at 11:17 I looked over at Goldilocks and we decided that we were sleepy enough to ignore the time and just celebrate a few minutes early. So, after excusing ourselves under the rouse of needing to get my wallet from his car, we brought in a gorgeous (and deliciously diabetic) Cravelicious Crave Cake, lit a squiggly candle, and plopped it in front of the Pumpkin, with Happy Birthday belting out at the top of our lungs.

I then proceeded to hand him his obscene and hilarious birthday card (the HOMO Boner Donor Card), and mortify him with his Birthday Poem.

There were a whole lot of inside jokes, a whole lot of mocking that some people still won’t understand, some disgustingly gross sections, and then a few heart-warming passages explaining how much we love him.

We laughed, some of us may have teared up a bit, but at the end of the night it just turned into one massive Pumpkin Love Fest, which, looking at that, sounds kind of kinky.

What I’m trying to get at, though, is that the Pumpkin just seemed so happy- I know it was a combination of a few things, but I honestly don’t know if the evening could have gone any better. In the end, I think he felt truly loved by everyone there, and if it would be possible to replicate that feeling every day, I would.

I don’t mean necessarily for the Pumpkin specifically, but rather for everyone I hold dear to me.

What if every single day I could make someone I loved feel ridiculously appreciated? Make them smile and laugh and blush and just irrevocably happy?

If I could choose one thing that I could try to do and not fail? Making those I care about happy. Every single day. Or even just make them all happy for one day. One day of total, outright bliss and contentment with the world.

It’s a very selfish thing to want to do, because at the end of the day, the thing that makes me happiest is making other people happy. I’m honestly not sure who enjoyed last night more- the Pumpkin or myself. All I know is that when I went home afterwards, I could not stop smiling, and I went to sleep knowing that if today could be 1/10th as good as yesterday, it would still leave me entirely happy.

At the end of the day, what else really matters? There will always be war, some people will always go hungry. There will always be pain and suffering and, while I’d like to believe that we could somehow solve all our problems, I think we’d just develop a whole slough of new ones out of sheer boredom if we could. So if I could do one thing, and be guaranteed not to fail?

Make people happy. No question.

Ca-caw.