Would You Listen?
I was sitting in the lunch room today, partaking in the age old past time of ranting about taxes and overtime. We had all received our Friday paycheques and I was, quite frankly, expecting more than what I got. The boss had been bugging me to work overtime lately (I hate overtime), so I put in 93 hours over a two-week period, which is 13 hours paid at a rate of time and a half. The problem is that the accountant taxes my income at the pro-rated figure of time and a half over the year as though I were earning a $40,000 salary, rather than the shift work it really is. So once the government has had a big bite off of my pay cheque, and I’ve paid for Employment Insurance and Canada Pension, I’m standing there staring at the cheque like: “This is what I get for two weeks of slavery?”
I suggested that instead of working overtime, we go to the exit off the Trans-Canada Highway at First Avenue and ask for change for two hours. According to an article I read in the Georgia Strait (a local Vancouver freebie), panhandlers can earn up to $12 an hour begging in the streets of this rather wealthy city. That’s over two-thirds my income per hour getting paid for doing nothing. From this comment, the conversation drifted into the typical argument and hypotheticals about how many beggars are actually in need, and how many leave the corner after an hour, undress from their rags, and jump into their black Lexus SUV’s. Personally, as something of a humanist, I prefer to believe that most people who hold their hands out are there because they have nowhere else to turn. Although, personally, I think it’s probably more honourable to work slave labour at a McJob than to reduce your dignity to the level of panhandling. Judging from the able-bodied beggars in Vancouver, I am beginning to lose my values of humanism.
At this point my co-worker told me a cool story, one which by the time you read it, is now third-hand hearsay, but at any rate, whether it be fiction or truth, it remains an interesting study in human nature. My co-worker was raised in a way to believe in the benefit of doubt, as was I, and thusly is more weakened to the pleas of the downtrodden than the passersby who do not so much as glance at the hands outstretched at their feet. One day, he was walking with his daughter in downtown Edmonton (where he is from), and he noticed a frail old man walking slowly, but stopping to ask a question of each person whom passed in their hurried state, to various events and affairs. The imagry I had of this moment was quite clear in my mind; the frail old man, the bustling street, the familiar coldness and dismissiveness with which the people ignored him; all the irony lost on so many lives clustered together in veritable hives of workers devoted to the dollar, unable to stop for a moment and attend to a simple question from an old man.
My friend gave his 8-year old daughter a toonie ($2 coin in Canada) and told her to give it to the old man when he approached them to ask for change. When in fact he did turn and found his attention received, he asked a simple question:
“Do you have time to listen to a story?”
My friend began to think the familiar thoughts we’ve all had when a poor person approaches with the sob story of their lives, the hard times they’ve fallen on, and the bad luck and misery that has been their life’s reward.
“Sure, go ahead.”
The old man continued.
“I won the lottery recently, and I had a dream last night that it is not right for me to keep this money for myself. In my dream I realized that this gift is one that should be shared with many people. I do not feel right keeping it for myself. I have decided to give each person $20.”
With this said, the old and frail man pulled a huge wad of money out of his pocket, stacks of $20 bills rolled into a cluster so large that they counted into many thousands. He peeled three twenties off the roll, handed them to my friend’s daughter, smiled at them, and continued on his way. Dumbfounded, all they could do was watch him continue his hopeless struggle to get people to stop for a moment and listen to an old man who only wanted to give them money. None would stop. None would listen.
The views expressed on this blog are the opinion of the author and should not be taken as fact.