The Windkey and the Lamplighter

Our society puts a lot of emphasis on self reliance. From the
American Dream of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps into a
successful life with a family, a white picket fence and 2.5 children
to our government’s tendancy to unilateral action, we are a people of
individualists.

On the other hand, we are a generous people, too. Charity is a virtue
we highly prize—you should not only get yourself a successful life,
you should be successful enough to be able to give lots
away. (No, even more
than
that.)

On a micro scale, I’ve been noticing both these trends: my reluctance
to ask for help while I’m hurt, and other people’s insistance on
assisting me. For example, yesterday I went to buy some tea from the
store here. I’d asked someone to go with me, since it’s a long way to
carry a hot cup on crutches, which essentially take both my hands, but
she got tied up in a meeting so I went alone. When I was there, the
clerk insisted that the person behind me in line carry my drink back
to my desk for me.

This could be dismissed as everyone else being reasonable and helping
me out, and me being unreasonable. I’m not going to totally disagree
with that assessment, either. But I also notice the looks that others
give me when someone’s carrying something for me, or when I stop to
rest because I am too out of shape to keep going at a reasonable
walking pace for more than a couple hundred feet. There is respect
accorded to my assistant, but also pity for them—that I am so weak
as to need assistance, so they had to step up. There is pity for
me, but no respect. When they look at me, I feel like behind the pity is an irritation that
they don’t dare express—that I am am failing to do what I should,
and therefore not pulling my weight in the
larger society (whether that’s society-at-large, a company, a team,
whatever).

I don’t think I feel this way when I see others injured—I mostly
wish there was something I could do—but I can draw a correllary to
the dark thoughts I sometimes have as I pass the beggars along the
roadside. I wonder sometimes why they don’t go get a job, so they
wouldn’t have to beg—so they could do work that would let them
respect themselves and be respected by the community. I wonder if
this is the same dark heart which leads to the feeling I get from
others—whether they mean to give it or not—and to, on a larger
scale, the genocides we see when a large group decides that some other
group is inferior.