Thanks for buying a guy and his dog a meal.

You're just making it worse. But I appreciate your appreciation.

Recently, hubby and I have been looking into renting a house from a family member. The house needs as lot of cosmetic work, and we are offering to do the work in exchange for a deduction on the rent for the first few months. When I tell people what we want to do, they wail at us, "But your just increasing the value of the house! You won't benefit from that at all! Don't bother!" It's made me wonder when we as a society decided it wasn't ok to allow ourselves to be "played like an old fiddle" if we knew we were giving someone something they would appreciate. Isn't that part of giving? Not worrying about what you are getting out of it?

You did a good thing, you did the right thing, who cares if he played you, who cares if it's only a drop in the bucket. If more people did stuff like that, the bucket would be full in no time.

For what it's worth, I don't hear that as grandstanding or self-congratulatory at all. You're expressing some emotionally complex and somewhat self-conflicting thoughts and internal questions, and to unpack those thoughts, it's necessary to give the circumstances in which they arose.

That ten bucks worth of stuff makes the difference to the man and his dog between a full belly and an empty one. (That's assuming that he was in earnest, and I see no reason to doubt that.) That's a big difference in the short term.

The long term is a different thing, and you address that with the "going back to my warm house" thoughts. But very few of us are capable of, much less likely to, holding ourselves responsible for a stranger's long-term well-being. For myself, I feel like long-term solutions are better addressed on the large scale: through organizations equipped to understand the specific challenges of the population(s) they serve.

And I have certainly thought to myself that a friendly, non-threatening down-on-his-luck stranger has played me like a fiddle. I don't feel bad about it, though; indeed, if I were living hand-to-mouth or living on the streets, I hope I'd develop the street smarts, the persuasive ability, and the conversational timing that this fellow apparently has, and I guess I wouldn't agonize over the ethics of it until after my belly was full.

You did a good thing, you did the right thing, who cares if he played you, who cares if it's only a drop in the bucket. If more people did stuff like that, the bucket would be full in no time.

Yup.

The man ate the sandwiches, the dog ate the food and the man is happy that his dog got to eat. This is good and you were part of it. You can bean plate layers beyond this, but really nothing changes the first part.

I guess that's all I'm saying, when I say "thanks for buying a guy and his dog a meal." Who cares if he played you? Who cares if it's a single drop in a very large bucket? Who cares if it made you feel good about yourself and you liked feeling good about yourself? You bought a guy and his dog a meal and that is a things in the world we should all be glad that someone does time and again.

You DEFINITELY got played. Dogs are always hungry! They'll give you the eyes, woooe is meeee, I'm about to staaaarve. Meanwhile, it's been 10 minutes since they finished dinner. DOGS MUST BE STOPPED.

Well. I'm not going to chew over all the points you raised right now because they're mighty complex (and it's good that you can be that transparent/vulnerable here) but in terms of what to think about the getting played thing--I've definitely given similar amounts of money to people on the street who were just preying on people to give em money rather than people who were in dire need or had a genuine story etc. But I'm like screw it. It's not a financial loss for me so at least my intentions were right.

Feeling bad. Hrm. Personally, I'd never feel bad or like I'd gotten played when it came to giving someone food. As opposed to cash.

You're expressing some emotionally complex and somewhat self-conflicting thoughts and internal questions, and to unpack those thoughts, it's necessary to give the circumstances in which they arose.

This. And I'm glad I had a place to talk about it where they wouldn't think I was grandstanding. All of you did a good thing tonight.

Peace.

This really all made me smile tonight, so thanks to all of you.

Agree with what others say - it was a kind act. But I want to add something else - and that's that if you feel bad, or you're second-guessing yourself, you did something you're not entirely comfortable with. You may have really helped a guy in need, or you may have been played (although someone who's willing to ask for food in front of a store is in some kind of need, whether it's food need or not). What matters is how you view this act.

It's impossible to meet all the needs in the world. Most of us go through life ignoring a lot - the majority - of the needs that are all around us, all the time. Some are visible, and some are hidden. People are not eating enough, can't pay for heating oil, are short on rent, owe money, need shoes. All over the place.

All of us who have a little bit extra are in a position to share and be generous, and we should do that. But how? Where? To whom? In what way? For me, the problem comes down to: given that I have X money or time to donate every month or every year, how do I want to apply it? Give it out randomly and be unsure about where it went and what it did? OR mindfully choose a place to put it, and then feel OK about not responding to most of the more ad hoc requests, since the budget line for donations has gone where it's going already?

I generally do the latter. And I'm not really suggesting one is better than the other, at all. I just think you have to do what feels right to you; you have to maybe come up with some personal boundaries or policies about how you give, just like we all have personal boundaries about how we talk to one another or touch one another.

Maybe it is because there was so much panhandling around when I grew up, but I never felt comfortable giving to panhandlers, ever. I always disliked the interaction, disliked the second-guessing, disliked the real amount of dishonesty that happened with that, disliked the random nature of the application of the aid, disliked the way it didn't address most of the systemic problems people were struggling with. So I eventually arrived at the personal policy that I don't give directly to panhandlers.

If you do have a personal policy, of cours there's always room to change your policy based on a specific incident. This one was something a little different from panhandling. You were personally moved by someone who asked in a gently way. He definitely activated your moral sense that you were a fellow human being and capable of helping. And you're not out a lot. Even if the guy eats the sandwiches, feeds the dog, and then goes and does something really lousy, you at least indicated there is kindness in the world, that not everybody's a hardass. There's some value in the sheer demonstration of that.

I think the formula of "When I give, when I don't give" is probably different for everybody, and some people might not want a formula at all. Which is of course fine. But if you don't want a formula, it helps to train yourself to be philosophical about the random giving, and not worry about where it went after you gave it, or what it meant. If you're the kind to fret about it, it might actually make you feel less generous, because each interaction becomes so fraught with seeming import. When it's really just a couple of bucks.

why should I feel good about spending $10 on someone when I'm going back to my comfortable home?

Because you gave freely, or with a small bit of prompting, but not out of guilt or some need to show others how well you are doing in life.

I took a class in College on Environmental Ethics, taught by someone who thought it was bunk (as far as I could tell). He had a thought game for the class was: how much would you pay to save African elephants? How about the polar bears? And the panda bears? Wow, that's going to cost a lot, and you don't have that much, plus we didn't even get to saving the rain forest! At that time, no one countered this claim that the world was too big to save by yourself, so you shouldn't worry about it, but the notion bugged me for quite a while (and still irks me). Afterwords, I realized that it's not the role of any one person to save the world, but do your part to make it better.

You gave a man and his dog some food, but you didn't bring him to your house and let him stay with you, or find him a job and get him a place to rent. You can always do more, but many people do nothing. Be happy with something, and recognize there's always more to do.