The Sandwich Drive

One of my favourite short stories can be found in a little New Testament life application Bible that I used to carry around everywhere with me. The story described a man walking along a beach where thousands upon thousands of starfish were stranded and he was chucking them back into the sea one at a time. As I recall, some people watched as the man tirelessly threw the starfish into the sea one by one and called out to him, saying, "You know, you're never going to be able to throw all of them back in. You may as well just give up now because your actions are insignificant." The man's response was something along the lines of, "I know that I can't save every starfish, but I am able to save some of them." The moral of the story was that any change or difference, no matter how small or insignificant they may appear in the grand scheme of things, may in fact still be very significant on an individual scale, and that we should not become demoralised or moved to inaction because we are overwhelmed by circumstances.


South Africans like to complain about the government taxing the middle and upper classes more and more and justifying it by saying they need more money for education, infrastructure, and so on. I really believe that the majority of South Africans would not mind giving up more of their income to aid the poor if we knew that it was definitely going to end up helping the less fortunate. Instead, we only find evidence of misappropriation and mismanagement of funds with many disadvantaged South Africans living in squalor. Often this evidence is manifested by reports of giant mansions being built and extravagant parties being thrown for government officials.


In Pretoria there are lots of beggars to be found on almost every street corner, all hours of the day and night. Most of the time I do what 99% (this is not an accurate statistic but rather a cynical guestimate) of the other motorists do and shrug, apologise and tell them I have no money, roll up my window and, if I'm in a terrible mood, avoid all eye contact and stare dead straight ahead. The few times I do have spare change lying around to give, I'll pass along the change and in the same mental process accuse them of using all the money they get from begging to buy glue. 


Recently I have become more frustrated with myself and the situation at large. For the past 3 years of driving through Pretoria I'd justified my inaction by saying that any small contributions I make are completely insignificant, so more often than not, I end up doing nothing. This has now come to an end... enter the Sandwich Drive! I went and bought a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter and a few plastic sandwich bags. For the past few days I've made a couple of sandwiches and placed them in sandwich bags, and while I drive, whenever I see someone who looks hungry, whether a beggar, security guard, gardener or similar, I hand them a sandwich. I don't do this to assuage my Christian guilt. When one is more concerned about whether an act of kindness is significant or not, it's not really a selfless act of kindness at all, but rather a selfish act aimed at making one feel better about oneself. 


The Sandwich Drive is not about random acts of kindness, it's about intentional acts of kindness. 

Birthday resolutions

Today I turned 24. April 22 is also Earth day, so happy bEARTHday to me! *cough* For those inclined towards self-evaluation, there are two annual events that cause individuals to spend some time in introspection: New Years and birthdays. New Year's resolutions are notorious for being doomed to fail and consist mostly of general health and well-being goals (lose weight, stop smoking/drinking, etc.) or aims of fulfilling dreams and becoming less boring (travel, read more, learn a new language, etc.) Apart from feeling guilty about overeating at Christmas, there's a desperate hope that the new year will be better than the last.


Birthdays fill one with a sense of urgency. When we're young, all we want to do is get older so that we can do those things we're not allowed to do as kids. Once we're older, all we want is to be younger again, probably because we feel that we're running out of time. Life's also more colourful and exciting when we're young. So when a birthday comes along, underneath all the warm fuzzies that we get from the abundance of messages and phone calls is a feeling of panic that we're getting old and running out of time.


These slightly cynical and fatalistic musings sound as if they come from an old geyser, not someone who's just turned 24. Perhaps this is so because my birthday gift to myself this year was a retirement annuity fund. Nothing makes one aware of one's mortality quite like applying for a pension fund. It's said that one can never start too early to invest in a pension fund, but to me it just seemed like something someone would do only when they've got it all figured out. Once you've set off in the great rat race and you've made it clear you can go some distance and it's not a 100m sprint, you get a pension fund.


All I can say is, I'm not so sure I've "got it all figured out" and I'm actually OK with that. It's ridiculous to imagine that at age 24 I know exactly what my life will be like. It's ridiculous that we're expected to know what we want to do with the rest of our lives after we finish high school. People are such dynamic, multi-dimensional beings but it seems like we love to make ourselves one-dimensional.


So this year's birthday resolution is to be more multi-dimensional! +1 to me for expanding in the direction of the blogosphere.