The Wisdom Of Solomon

I was lying in bed a few mornings ago when I was startled out of my reverie by a knock at the door. It was a guy I don't know very well. He's an old boyfriend of my roommate's sister. As I said, I don't know him real well but we've met quite a few times. I would consider him a buddy. He said he needed to talk to my roommate so I let him in and went back to bed. I couldn't sleep so I was just lying there watching TV. At a certain point my roommate left and my buddy didn't. He was just sitting on our couch watching TV also. At one point he asked me if he could borrow my phone. I let him.

When he returned the phone he wanted to know if I could buy him a pack of cigarette's because he was stressed. So I said, "Sure". So I drove him to a gas station. Then he wanted to know if he could grab a beer. I said, "Sure". On the way back, he told me that he had been homeless for two days because he had left the halfway house he had been staying at. The night before, he had slept in an abandoned house. He told me that he was starting a new job next week but was kinda screwed until then. He had come over to ask my roommate if he could stay at our place for a few days and my roommate said no.

When we got home my roommate's sister drove by and honked at us. When we got inside, my phone rang. It was my roommate's sister. "Tyler," she began, "Don't tell him who you're talking to." My living room isn't that big so of course he was hearing every word of this. "He started drinking again so don't give him no money." Then she hung up. He was visibly upset. Later on I received a text message from my roommate that said I should double check to make sure all the doors and windows were locked when I left to make sure that our buddy couldn't get back in.

After chit chatting for awhile I went to lie back down. It was around 1 pm at this point and I had to get up at 6 to go to work. He came in and asked if he could borrow my phone again. When he returned it he wanted to know if I could give him a ride somewhere at 4:30. I told him I needed to get some sleep before work but that I would give him money to take the bus. He then asked if he could borrow 20 bucks from me until he got back on his feet and I told him that I really didn't have the extra money to spare. "Please", he said, "I don't have any money to get anything to eat." I told him that I could give him a couple of extra bucks with the bus money to get something to eat but that was it.

When I woke up he was gone. I've been thinking about it a lot. When I was 17 I left home. Once for a few weeks (Then I foolishly went back), the second time was for good and for the first few weeks my mother told me I couldn't have my truck so I was walking everywhere and sleeping in a tent when I couldn't crash at someone's house. I eventually got the truck and then could sleep there if I needed to but something had always bothered me.

I didn't have any money saved up when I left. I was working but broke and in a moment of weakness I asked a bunch of my friends for money. I hung around with a lot of rich Brentwood kids who drove around in 2000 Mustangs and ate sushi and shit and there's something else they all had in common.
Not one of them gave me a fucking dime.

Some of them were kind enough to convince their parents to let me stay a couple nights or wash my clothes and shit but nobody gave me any money and they all had so much to spare. I always wondered about that and deep down I'm still resentful. It bothered me that I hadn't given my buddy more. Sure, I don't really have it, but if I scrimped on a few things here and there I could have spared it. The more I thought about it the more it bothered me. There's a lot of shit I could be out there doing to help people that I'm not.

I talked to one of the people who really bailed me out back then and asked him why he had helped me as opposed to helping other people. He explained it to me. About how he used to feel like he could save the whole world but now he contented himself with just working on his little corner of it. How if you try to do things like that all the time you'll burn out. How sometimes the best way to help someone is to not help them. And I know all that. Hell, I agree with all that. But somehow it just seems wrong to not try and help everybody in the world, even if you know that you can't.

There is an old prayer that says, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference." It's doubting that I have that wisdom which haunts me most of all.

Until next time, True Believers...
The bottle is empty
And the well is dry
October 2008

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