why should i?!?

Jean Cocteau  says that there are two kinds of people – kids and adults. I have always perceived myself as an adult. At the age of thirteen I looked the way I look today, at 36.

Though I resented it, I went out in the street to clean off the pavement the broken glass bottle and the glue that had spilled out of it, thrown out the balcony by my mom. I shouted that the one who had made the mass should be the one to clean it up. Still I went out and did it, as my mom wouldn’t. She elbowed me out and locked the door, so there I was – a fat teenage girl, in shorts and slippers, a baggy T-shirt, and I could have been spotted by a boy I was in love with. I was mad, helpless, frustrated, and … I marched downtown to the construction site where my dad was telling the workers what to do, and I told him, “She is your wife. She made the mess. You should take care of her.” He asked me to calm down and go home, so … I went back to clean the mess.

I have so often cleaned up other people’s mess. I have so often believed that if you see a chocolate bar wrap in the street and you just pass by without picking it up and throwing it into the bin, you are as responsible as the person who dropped the wrap on the pavement. So, whenever my boyfriend failed to give money to his ex-wife for his daughter or buy new boots for his child, I was the one to drag him to the store and pay for the boots, etc.

However, I feel that not all situations are equivalent. Yes, I still believe that whenever I can, I should try to prevent people from harming other people, but … should I try to prevent them from harming themselves?

If I always clean up a person’s mess, will he ever learn how to do it on his own, will he ever grow up?

People often want a thing, believing (often unconsciously) that it will make them happy. As helping people get happy makes me happy, I often give people what they want. It often doesn’t make me happy … because my gift often turns out to be useless, as the person who got it, actually didn’t move an inch toward happiness. I have experienced too many wastes of time, money, effort …

It happens often because too many people rarely know for sure what they really need, and there are so many people who believe giving is essentially good.

If you are a compulsive giver, you are compelled to give whenever you see the slightest sign of pain. Just like a doctor, you sometimes give people  a pill which is known to cure a certain disease. Sometimes you just give them placebo. Sometimes you hit, and sometimes you miss.

A compulsive giver most often gives whatever a person wants, but does a patient always know which pill is the right one for him? By giving people whatever they want, you often poison them or don’t let them cope on their own.

Then what should I do when people want things from me and I really want them to be happy? Give them sugar-coated poison?

As I am a compulsive giver, which means I give on impulse, I should stop and think before giving. Well, yes, I don’t have time to do that if someone is drowning (or seems to be), but most often this is not the case.

I might not be the wisest person to always know best, but I am smart enough to make an educated guess – to find out what giving my gift might lead to.

It takes time, yes. Sometimes it’s easier to give – it’s faster, and you don’t bother think. But sooner or later it comes to you – the bitter feeling that you have wasted something. And the feeling of waste doesn’t make ME happy.