I Feel Like an Awful Person
The other day after driving home from the dentist, and saw this car that was stalled in the middle of the lane. The driver was already pushing his car. I was about halfway out of my own car to help him. But after flipping on the emergency lights behind him, I realized that leaving my car unattended to go help this guy was a bit of a dumb idea. So I got back in, and tried to maneuver around to try and get into a spot to park my car to go help.
But by the time I was about to turn, the guy already had 2 other people who jumped out of their cars (granted they were passengers not the drivers) helping him. Faith in humanity was restored, but I also felt shitty because I this was my opportunity to go help someone. And I missed it.
I'm not a people pleaser. I don't mean that as in a "people don't like me cuz I'm honest" or a #tellsitlikeitis type. Those people are just assholes trying to help themselves sleep at night. I like making people happy, but I don't really go out of my way like others do it seems.
I completely forget about holidays/birthdays, and by proxy I forget to budget to get gifts for people. My wife usually makes up for this. I'm good at picking out gifts, but I'm absolute cheeks at actually putting together the funds to actually acquire them of my own volition.
Father's day is rolling around, and once again I forgot to get a gift for my step-dad and FIL. I kinda blew what I had on getting a Switch 2 for my wife for our anniversary. I try and do something nice for others, but I always feel like I'm missing something, or not doing enough. Half the time I completely space just saying "thank you".
I feel like whenever I DO do a "good deed", it never actually makes me feel like I did something good. I almost feel worse sometimes. Like a while back I got this homeless guy outside of a grocery store I frequent some food. I tried to maximize the amount of food he got for a decent price (since I didn't have much cash on hand).
Despite him being seemingly genuinely grateful, it didn't actually make me feel good like it seemingly does for other people who do charitable acts. I feel like I'm picking up what the state failed to provide for people. It made me more angry than anything. Like it shouldn't be up to a luck of the draw to get that one generous stranger in order to eat that day.
I feel this overwhelming sense of guilt any time I go get lunch on my work day, and see someone outside who probably hasn't eaten in god-knows-how-long. Why am I eating, when they're not?
Billionaires are either sociopaths or put themselves into some moral comatose state in order to hoard that vast amount of wealth. I don't think I'd be able to sleep at night knowing I'm just sitting on that fat of a pile of cash.
I still kick myself in the ass over this one time I was walking into work and this kid came up asking if I could get him some food. I damn near thought I was gonna get scammed or something, because this kid was missing a leg and wheelchair bound. I've been to enough tourist traps to see this as a "you're about to lose your wallet" warning. So, I turned the kid down and walked into my office building. I sat in the lobby looking out for this kid, hoping SOMEONE would help him. Thankfully someone did.
Then I started to get mad at myself, like "god damnit, why was I so paranoid about this kid in a wheelchair? What was he gonna do? Take my wallet and run?" The guilt kinda ate at me all day, because I was thinking that if it were my daughter out there on the street, I'd hope someone would help her.
I feel like I get handed these opportunities to do something good, and I let it flop. I know it won't "fix" anything. I know the problems are systemic. I kinda feel this incessant need to put my money where my anarchist mouth is.
It makes me uncomfortable when people say I'm a "good [insert title here]". I don't really think I'm doing anything extraordinary. Most of the time I think I'm only doing the bare minimum.
I think about my dad a lot, and the memories my mom has of him. Like the one time he handed a woman on the street with her kids our last $100 and told her to get a hotel and get her kids off the street. It shouldn't be a surprise that 200 people (almost 1/3 of which we didn't even know) came to his memorial to pay their respects.
I want to be a good person. I don't care about validation. I just want to feel like I'm putting some "positive energy" or whatever you'd call it into the world. Spark something in someone to replicate in a sort of domino effect. The world needs to be a better place, and it's not going to get there by only thinking of ourselves.
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as of writing this...
I'm at work and have been working on my Neocity website. I finished up the "About" page finally. I wanted to make it look like a 2000s MySpace page, and I think I did a good job. I basically replicated Tom Anderson's old page from back then using the Wayback Machine. Now to work on my Classic Halo shrine... and the rest of the site for that matter...