Poor me.

I do not want to talk too much about this. Just to say that there is so much poverty around and to such an extreme level that you have to put up walls. You have to frown and be angry with the beggars. You forget even why you're angry at them except that it had something to do with being strong and not giving every last one all your money. So then you end up giving none to anyone. Or each time you develop a "system" to decide who to give to it crumbles under the onslaught. You end up giving money to the smiling drunk who can tuck his foot behind his ear while you shrink away in disgust from the little old lady who's too weak to do anything but cling to your arm. And you might stay ahead of the guilt by observing to yourself how people generally seem happier, the wonderous simplicity of a peasant's life, the purity of poverty, it's us with money who have it all wrong. Or what good can I do, what a tiny drop in the ocean anything i give will be. Or the mafia gets all the money, its the mafia that chopped off their limbs. There are numerous others you can filter it through, until it becomes nearly nothing.

So its a relief sometimes when the wall comes down, crashing down sometimes, when you hear something in someone's voice or watch someone who isn't even aware you're there. You realise the reality of that moment, the genuine suffering right there in front of you that you can probably alleviate. It hits you in the stomach I find, and suddenly I have to not be looking at this person anymore.

I don't even necessarily give them anything, I can't even face them. I just indulge that moment so as to remember who I hope I am, and to remember that really when you get down to it, its not ok.

And then, in no time at all, the walls go back up.