Society and Helping People

Back when I was a kid, I remember my dad would always call for occasional meetings as a family and in one of those meetings, I remember he had warned us about helping before. He had told us how back in his days as a kid, kids were always encouraged to help anyone in need and how all of that has changed now because of the many evil in the world today. So he made sure to warn us about how we go about helping people, he never said that we shouldn't, he just asked us to be really careful when doing it.

_{Photo by McKenna Phillips}

And based on the area we lived in at the time, it was very understandable while he told us all of that because there were a lot of crazy things happening everyday around us, and that was one reason why I never forgot about those warnings from him.

But I'm a good kid, I always want to help people if I'm in a position to, but the last thing I want is to lose my life in the process. Reminds me about this one time on my way home from my mom's shop. This was during the time when we recently moved to a different area but my mom's shop was still at our previous house, so she sent me there every day to go sell for her while she learned some other business elsewhere.

Well, on one faithful night on my way back home, I was halfway across the road to go enter this public transport when I saw a blind elderly man who surprisingly knew that I was about walking past him and had immediately said these words to me.

"My son, please help me cross the road I can't see" he had said.

Now my first impression had been to help him but for some reasons my legs refused to stop walking and I just kept on going until I got into the bus. Then as the bus drove away, I began to ask myself questions, questions like how did he even get to the middle of a busy road that late at night (the time was between 9pm to 10pm) if he was truly blind. Also, both ends of the road had this huge ditch at both sides, how was he able to get across them before getting on the road?

I thought about these two questions for years now and each time I think about it, I always end up with two answers, the first being that either someone helped him cross and then left him at the middle of the road, which is crazy and unbelievable to me, or the man simply wasn't blind and probably was just looking for someone to kidnap or do some voodoo stuff on because why would a blind man be at the middle of the road late at night, and then asking me directly to help him.

The more I think about that scenario the more scary it feels because if the man wasn't blind, then something terrible probably would have happened to me that night, but what if he was indeed blind and I left a blind man in the middle of the road?

The truth is I really won't blame myself much because the society I live in made me that way, they made me scared of helping people because of the many times those help have been used against those who were trying to help. It's a sad way to live life but it's the only way to live it if you want to live long.