I get it, but $5 to change someone's life?

It's funny there was a moment I was at a bus station, somebody asked me for money and I dumped all the coins I had in my wallet in their hand for future bus rides. And some lady comes up to me jokingly like "you handing money out? what about me".

But yeah I think I should just give the money out, I think aside from the guy at the red light that's there almost everyday when it's warm, it's rare I encounter somebody personally. Until I go into the city.

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soulofmischief 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Buy someone new clothes. A sleeping bag. Utensils. A library card or bus pass. If it has to be cash, you don't have to stop at $5. I sometimes give out tens and twenties. Obviously at a place like California your altruism can be spread pretty thin; just ignore the people who are more difficult / less appreciative. Find someone who is appreciative. Get to know them and find out what is holding them back. Maybe you can't help, maybe you can. I've had people tell me I've made their day, their week, their year.

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ge96 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It's that thing though I'm pretty sure I was scammed by this couple at a gas station asking me for "gas money" even though they wanted cash then the lady said "your mother raised a good boy" lmao.

To me this is a gov problem not an individual problem. Yeah if someone was dying in front of me I would try to help them. But now I gotta go to a store and buy em a tent and what not? I guess I am an asshole. Also read up "do you give money to homeless" on reddit. Almost all of the answers are no.

I have to go there and face my fear. See if I do get assaulted, I'm a 6ft buff dude so I don't think so but I'm also not a trained fighter. I just hate this fear, that normal people like living in NYC deal with on a daily basis.

Getting jumped is real though, I've been jumped before by a group.

Might as well just give the $5 though and move on with my life.

Back to women, I have negative traits as demonstrated above, indecisiveness and low self-esteem/caring about what other people think of me too much.

All this stuff is stupid, "I'm a good person because it's what people think you should do" give money to a non-taxed church, politicians, etc... then the individual person not giving a dollar to a homeless person is a bad guy.

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soulofmischief 3 hours ago | parent [-]

There's risk to helping people out.

I've been fucked over plenty times, sometimes to the tune of 5 digits. Once even cost me my home, and I found myself homeless again for a while.

A good friend of mine once gave someone a ride at a gas station, and they led him to a house where another person jumped inside the car with a gun. They held him hostage, tried to force him to do fentanyl at gunpoint, and drove him around to several ATMs so he could empty out his account. They used his vehicle to sell drugs, and held him hostage in a motel room where they were also sex trafficking women. They nearly killed him, and he is lucky to be alive.

I also know others who have been jumped around here and had the shit beaten out of them. For reference, I live in a city frequently cited as a "murder capital" of the US. You have to be way more careful out here than in downtown San Francisco. As far as NYC, I imagine it's a mixed bag depending on your area. I'm not suggesting naively approaching strangers, I hope it doesn't come across that way.

You aren't an asshole if you don't buy someone a tent, I was suggesting ways to help that have more tangible impact than handing someone a $5 bill which probably just goes towards an addiction. I don't hang around Reddit, so I can't speak for the general callousness of the community, but what I'm suggesting is to go beyond the average, to do more than most would, in reverence of the fact that we're all floating on this lonely space rock together.

As far as women, all I can say is that my girlfriend would be fine with any of those traits, as long as I still maintained a level of compassion.

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ge96 3 hours ago | parent [-]

There is also the thought of too many people to help. Like right now there are thousands/millions of people starving is it my fault? Should I empty all of what I have to help them because I'm guilty if I don't. That's what I'm wrestling with granted what we're talking about is not the same thing. Handing somebody $5 and moving on is not that but yeah idk. I guess as a person that keeps giving shit out eg. $100K to my own family, it gets old.

But I will go out there, I'll see what happens. I need to face my fears.

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soulofmischief 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I hear you. I've had ungrateful family members drive me broke. Compassion is doing the right thing, even when it's scary, or it hurts, or no one is watching, or when people around you misunderstand and demonize you, or they are just plain ungrateful and leave you holding the bag. I admire your willingness to continue grappling with it and finding your own answer.

Regarding women again, are you meeting enough of them? What's the scene like where you live? I don't know what it's like in NYC, but the social/dating scene in my current city just doesn't exist, and I'm watching some of my friends grapple with seriously heartbreaking loneliness.

I don't know what to tell them. I'm dating my high school sweetheart again, but we were broken up for several years, and many of the experiences I had with women during that time were quite traumatic. The rest of them were just not a good fit. I had completely given up on dating altogether, at least for a period of time, and only then did the love of my life find her way back to me. Despite years of extreme loneliness in new cities, I still consider myself lucky and wish I had some actionable advice I could tease from the situation. I've even experimented with building dating apps because this epidemic just scares the shit out of me.

	▲	ge96 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not in NYC sorry to give that impression. I was mentioning NYC as far as being densely populated, I'm in the midwest. Honestly I don't meet much women outside of work or the occasional girl I run into at a gym. I know the cliche saying "go join a club" meet girls that way. I could see that but it's also possible I like being alone too but yeah it just bothers me that my self-deemed value is whether or not I get laid. The other problem too today is the fakeness of social media, filters on faces, photos looking like peopel go to beaches all the time/live extravagant lives. Bars it's like a self-control issue, use drinking for courage then you get too f'd up. In the midwest but we have a small "city" with "skyscrapers" that I wanted to go into and do photography at.