Helping the needy is a virtuous trait by those with good hearts and with the best of intentions. Helping those who want help is another matter.
I received a text message of ‘Help Me’ via my cell phone around 05:40PM on 01-July-2007 from someone I once knew close at heart and by blood. I did not respond to him knowing that there is the possibility that there is financial trouble brewing.
We suspected that perhaps he was lying to us about being laid off from this manufacturing company nearby the Costco store (which is currently under construction and supposed to be completed in the summer of 2007).
Besides the text message as the second hint, the first sign of trouble was him eating lunch at home with us twice last week. These visits were rare because he usually claims to be too busy or tired to join us.
Earlier today, the three of us had attended morning mass at 08:00AM in the chapel instead of the church (due to some parking lot reconstruction). The folding chairs were uncomfortable.
We had breakfast at McDonald’s restaurant and then dropped off letters at our local post office where this white guy with dirty blond, shaggy hair in his broken blue sedan was screaming his off head for being stuck behind another vehicle that had trouble getting his mail into the drive-up and out too.
After the post office, we decided to check out the parking lot where he works to see if indeed he is working. His car was nowhere to be found at the normal parking space near the doors.
We remembered him wanting to use his bicycle to work since the distance is only three blocks away from his house to his work. Bicycling does save on spending for gasoline, reduces automobile emissions into the atmosphere and is good for one’s health too.
I later got my gasoline (at $3.41 per gallon for octane rating of 91) and went to the optometrist appointment schedule at 10:20AM to get my annual eye exam with the medical insurance. Without COBRA I would have paid out of pocket now that I am currently unemployed.
I had the greatest help from these people, who processed my appointments calmly, selected frames – one regular and one shades – to my budget and described this latest ‘high-definition’ lenses manufactured in San Diego, CA. My spending was over six-hundred dollars with this one visit!
At around 12:15PM, I found myself home and parking to the right side of the driveway, since Brats black Mustang car was parked on the left side of the driveway. While Twit parked her gray Acura, two-door car behind his car, I immediately got out my car and rang the doorbell to the front door. He answered the door at the second ring.
I got inside real fast with Twit following behind. I did not remove my plastic shades to protect my dilated eyes while eating (refer to an uploaded photo of my right eye modified to look bulging).
The four of us ate lunch of onchoy (or kang-kong, a leafy green vegetable), beef stew and bar-be-que chicken as Twit (who didn’t touch our food as usual) tried to participate in the conversation, which was heated again between Maw and Brat.
Apparently, Maw was already crying from expressing how touched she was for my recognizing how much I owed my bio-units over the years. If one takes the free living arrangement under their roof since eighteen years old, the re-payment would have been what I have already earned through my thirty-eight years of working hard.
Again, those persons who mean well to those who ask for help do not always receive help in return, if ever. The gratitude by simple recognition alone was sufficient for these people, who didn’t ask for anything owed in return.
The reward is priceless when everyone learns how to appreciate any help without any conditions whatsoever. However, our greatest lessons in this lifetime indicate that having the altruistic behavior of serving others is a form of ego, which in this case means helping more than necessary for the recipient(s) own good.
Our doors are closed to anyone who abuses our help (especially in the forms of donations, sponsorships or loans). I know from personal experience that people desperate for help in any matter would fabricate and exaggerate stories to obtain the pity of the listener and convince us suckers to provide assistance or help.
Our discernment in matters related to helping others than ourselves has been limited in the past and at present is gradually awakening us with the hurtful effects but necessary in order for us to understand that people are definitely self serving.
Our trusts have been betrayed many, many times over and we have learned in this current lifetime each person seems to deserve their fate or destiny. Once again, I emphasize that each person is to be held accountable and responsible for his or her own actions, words and deeds.
In other words, those who empty themselves from materialistic or spiritual endeavors are free from owning anything and owing nothing at all.
For those who believe that help in not available, this is false. There is always the bank and trustworthy friends who know how to operate as banks.
At 12:40PM, the twosome left with Brat sarcastically thanking Maw for the argument, which he should have taken as a positive discussion of how not to spend unwisely and save for the future when none else could help in times of need, if ever. I bade the twosome good luck. We all need good luck sometimes, right?
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