FOR PITY SAKE

We see them all over the place. At our front door, alongside our car windows, on street corners...beggars, deadbeats, bums...you know the kind. Always with their hands out, always looking for charity. What, oh what are we to do with all these pesky bums?

Now, a certain measure of common sense is called for. There are undoubtedly people who have made a career out of professional bumming. Why? Well, because the prospect of easy money and/or gifts for minimal effort is an attractive one to the lazy, crafty and opportunistic among us. Therefore, we need to be watchful. As the old saying goes: "A fool and his money are easily parted."

However, what about those people who are in sincere and dire need of a helping hand? Are we to dismiss them along with all the rest of these annoying bums, and simply continue pursuing our plans and our dreams? I pull up to a traffic light, or I open my front door, and I look into the eyes of these bums, these people, these human beings. I hear a faint question ringing in my head: Are the plans and dreams of these people any less valid or important than my own? Do they have any less right to passionate aspirations, even to essential food and shelter, than I do?

I'm mindful of another saying: "There, but by the grace of God, go I." I need to constantly remind myself that I am no better, nor any more deserving of happiness and provision, than the people whose weary and heartbroken eyes I look into as their paths fleetingly cross with my own. I need to remember that the moment I lose my compassion, is the moment I lose my humanity. To live without empathy, is barely living at all.
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Grant Alexander Cyster owns the blog entitled "I THINK, THEREFORE I ACHE.", offered as part of his Cape Town based freelance media business at: www.grantcyster.com