There's something revealing about giving a present. I feel myself
recoil from the act of giving presents. I feel it is too
ritualized, too rigid.
This same feeling is also present in "doing a good deed". My
neighbor got confined in a wheelchair, so I took him shopping
before christmas to the grocery next door. He couldn't get there
due to the snow banks on the street.
What is that feeling of resistance? It's slightly different in
the two cases, because in the case of giving presents, my morals
go against the consumption implied by the ritual, but in the case
of helping a neighbor, I agree that this is something each of us
should be in some sense "expected" to do.
Besides, I like helping people when they actually need help.
I don't like helping people when they succumb to being more
helpless. I guess that is the dilemma that contributes to the
feeling tone around the act of helping.
It's also something about individuality and the lack of it. When
I walk down the street, I want to be just a faceless someone, not
a person with a story. I am on a conveyor belt just getting
through the area to reach a destination. There is a comfortable
zone of dehumanisation that pulls me in. Helping the neighbor
pulls me up from that zone, becoming an active member in the
neighborhood. But this "being active" can mean being active as
an individual, but also being active as a part of the collective
called "the neighborhood". I am not very fond of having collective
expectations focused on my person, not in general, but definitely
not in that space. I see the space as a transitional area between
my home and whatever outside objective I have.
Maybe it's a design flaw in myself, or the neighborhood, or the
culture, maybe all of the above. As usual, I feel this to be a
very complex matter, but I also feel like there is a way to
somehow be genuine and face this dilemma straight on. This year
I have failed at it again. How to reveal yourself truly?
