Mamagotcha's journal

I'm no angel. Bill and I were rolling our eyes and shrugging helplessly at each other when he couldn't see us. Sometimes I give a homeless person a buck just 'cos I have a couple extra and I feel like sharing, but other times I feel irritated and manipulated and disgusted by them.

I interact with people in need the same way I parent my kids... the best I know how to do, but imperfectly and sometimes with anger, resentment, bitterness, hurt, and fear. I judge other people horribly ("If they hate their kids so much, why the hell did they even bother procreating?" "How could someone be stupid enough to drink that much?" and to the teens with their pants around their thighs, slouching slowly across busy streets midblock, ignoring the honks, "What's the matter with these morons? Why do they value their lives so little?")

I suck, and I know it. I'm very lucky, I've landed in a comfortably privileged middle-class American life, I'm trying to raise socially aware kids and not hog (too many) more resources than I ought to... but I suck at being tolerant, patient, kind, angelic.

I don't go out of my way, in particular, to be nice to people. Sure, I'll volunteer at Harvesters or ring a Salvation Army bell, but it's because someone else organized it and it's with other people I want to hang out with. I volunteer doula work, but it's at least as much because I'm fascinated by the process of birth and how different people cope, and disgusted by how they are treated (and, honestly, not a little by the power I sometimes have in those situations to change a woman's experience from terrifying to copeable) as it is for actually helping altruisticly.

I'm irked by having to pay for other kids' educations when none of those tax monies are available to me for my homeschooling efforts. I'm pissed that I have to pay for all my perinatal and a lot of my health care costs out of pocket because Blue Cross doesn't agree with me about what's best for me and my family. If I had a magic button that would cause red-light runners to suddenly lose a digit every time they charged through intersections in their SUVs, this city would be littered with phalanges.

My personal policy is to give help, if I can and within reason, to people who ask me for it. This could be a mom with a flat tire waving me down on the freeway, or some derelict asking for something to eat when I walk into Wild Oats (when I asked what he wanted, I was so surprised by his answer – "Carrot juice, please" – that I complied). This isn't because I feel like I have so much that I should share (although maybe it should be), but rather a sense of, as one poster noted, "there, in his shoes, but for the grace of folks like you, go i."

That's all, I guess. I'm concerned that, if I'm not nice to the down-and-out when I'm flush, then when it's my turn in the gutter nobody will help me out. It all comes around eventually. What you give returns three times, a Wiccan tenet that I've seen work over and over. Is that selfish? Probably. But at least it feels honest, unlike blowhards that rant and rave about hellfire and punishment. I'm not scared of some boogeyman in the sky telling me to be a better person so I'll earn some nice reward. I should be nice because it's how I'd like to be treated if I were in the same position.

I'm not always nice, though. Just thought I should be upfront about that.