This evening, as I was leaving the grocery store, a woman seated on an electric scooter outside the exit asked if I could help her. Normally, I would have shaken my head and kept on walking to my car. Tonight, I stopped and spoke to this woman.
She told me a story. About how she and her family had come down from Virginia and lost everything in a house fire, and the only thing keeping them going was prayer and the kindness of strangers.
Maybe it was a lie. Maybe it was the truth.
I don't know.
I gave her five dollars, and walked to my car, wondering if I had been fooled. And then I started to wonder why I was thinking like that.
Regardless of the truth, whatever it may be, that woman was sitting outside in the cold, rainy night asking for help.
So I helped her.
Call me a fool if you want, or an enabler, or whatever. I gave someone in the cold a little bit of cash. Maybe she'll spend it on booze, or maybe she'll spend it on food or rent.
Maybe what I should have been wondering, as I drove home, is why we live in a world where people who need help have to beg?
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