Things that ENLIGHTEN me

Through the course of a single day I observe many things that I never think twice about. Sometimes something may intrigue me and I will try and figure it out. I may over analyze the situation or I may misinterpret it. Who knows? But this is what I do. Sometimes I feel I need to do this and correlate it to myself and see how the pieces fit. Some of the time I get nothing from it and sometimes I gain huge insight that aids my self growth. Here is one situation I found interesting that I had not really considered.

Situation: A panhandler, a bartender and two business women.
At first glance they were very different. Yet on this particular day I realized how similar they all really were.

It is November 1998, in San Diego California. I just moved to San Diego from Hawaii and I had absolutely nothing to do so I decided to hang out with a friend. She was bartending at a small pub. It was a beautiful day so I decided to walk there. On my way, I saw a man panhandling for money on a street corner. This is not an uncommon sight for this town but for some reason I felt compelled to watch him.

His shoulder length hair was tangled and dirty with a hint of gray. His clothing was tattered, torn and extremely dirty. Looking in his eyes, you could see pure emptiness. Void of any emotion, value or self worth. His day was just another day for him to stay alive. Oddly enough, his actions were calculated. When I first saw him, that latter panhandler description was what I saw. That is what had me caught in his “I am so pathetic” web. He knew how to look and what to do for each possible contributor. When no one was around he regained some personal spark.Then when someone came walking by he bounced right back into the panhandler mode; the mode that made him the most money.

His ambitions in life were to merely survive and that money he begged for was the only way for him to survive. So the personal tools he had were to be as sad and pathetic looking as possible to capture the emotions of the passersby. I sat there and wondered where his drive to achieve had gone.

I continued on my way to visit my friend. When I walked into the pub I realized that a visit was out of the question. At 11am, the pub was packed. I sat at a table on the back wall and started noticing yet another game of survival. I started to realize that survival is situational. My friend has to be situational and her emotions must change with each customer. She’s average looking with brown hair and dressed in regular mall type clothing. She is perfect in this job because she is very similar to the customers she is serving. Her ambition is to be liked because her tips are her way to survive. Not far from the panhandler, the bartender changed her actions for each possible contributor. It was not hard to see how they both knew how to survive in their own situations.

I decided to leave the pub and look for a place to have lunch. On my way, crowds of people walked quickly past me. I decided to stop for a moment on the corner of this busy sidewalk. I began to watch the business men and women quickly walking to their destinations. Not paying any attention to their surroundings because they had an agenda that had to be met. Two business women walked past me and into the corner bistro. They were in nice tailored business suits and had organizers in hand. As they passed, they were talking so intently, I am not sure if they even knew anyone else existed. I also decided to go into the bistro and eat.

As I sat at the table, I wondered how much different these two women were from my friend and the panhandler. They did not have to interact with the surrounding public and this suit them just fine. I wondered what their survival tactics were. Then it hit me. Their survival tactics were to utilize their knowledge and not themselves. They could achieve their goals by what they learned getting an education and not by their living experiences. Their ambitions were to survive through achievement. They needed no one. They only needed the strategy they learned in the business world. However, all the outcomes were the same. It was to make money the best way they knew how.

So one survival tactic was sympathy, one was charisma and the other was educational achievement and yet all the outcomes were the same; MONEY. Of course they were at different levels but they were all the same.

We all need to survive in our own way and one person’s way may not be the next ones way. It’s kind of funny, I always thought survival was a way to get along and I guess that is a part. But a much large part is that survival in this world means money and the term ‘survival of the fittest” really does not fit into our world anymore. It has become survival of the smartest. So all of our ambitions come down to how we survive and that is to make money. I guess the way in which we survive is directly related to the choices we make in our lives.

People watching is a past time I have always enjoyed. It gives me insight into my world and when I observe certain situations, I like to see how they fit into my life. What happens to my finding will become part of me. I will grow to become a better person if I can somehow sort out the things I cannot understand. Its called compassion; compassion to others in my world that are not like me.