Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Harder than it looks

So a weird thing just happened. I had a bit of trouble finding someone to buy food for today. It's quite cold, so maybe people are trying to stay indoors or something. Anyways, I saw a man and asked him if I could buy him lunch as per usual. He was like "What are you going to buy me?" and I asked if there was anything he'd like, but he didn't know what he wanted. He was standing outside of a Thai restaurant so I suggested something from there. He proceeded to follow me into the store and looked at the menu. It made me a bit uncomfortable to be standing alone with a random homeless man, but luckily it was in the middle of the day in a restaurant with people in it. He seemed confused by the menu like he had probably never eaten Thai food before. He was like "It's nice of you to want to do this, but I don't want to spend your money and then not like it, so maybe another time. Thanks." and he left. I was left feeling really weird about the whole situation. I didn't even end up finding anyone else, so my "buy a homeless person a meal" experience for today didn't even involve me purchasing somebody food. I would be interested in your thoughts on this situation because I'm slightly confused about it. I'm going out later, so maybe I'll still be able to complete the task for real, but somehow I feel like this still counts. Let me know what you think.

Later

3 comments:

  1. the climb is part of the ride...

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's really nice to buy someone lunch but some people crave a human connection as a random act of kindness more than food or a material possession. Just feel good about your atempt because being treated like a human being is the most important thing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Anon. Who are you, by the way? I totally agree. I've actually become friends with one of the guys I met this week. I talk with him every few days and I think it really means something to him to have someone stop to talk to him.

    ReplyDelete