Am I a hypocrite?
So yesterday I got ready for school in a haste and as usual felt I needed to jet to school because for some reason I felt I was late which I really wasn't. On my way to the train, I saw two women with flyers and booklets and I proceeded to walk by them. Now those who know me know that I find it incredibly difficult not to accept a flyer when it is handed to me. Most of the time I have no interest or desire for whatever the distributor is pushing but I feel incredibly guilty when I don't take one so to speak.
I think the guilt stems from me wondering if my failure to take one makes them sad. Other times I feel like they have a quota and if I don't take one to help them reach their quota then they will be fired or something horrible like that :(. So back to the story, as I proceeded to walk it out to the train, the younger of the two women approached me and immediately I prayed she wasn't going to try to make me stop and listen. Thankfully she wasn't. She began by saying that she understood I was in a hurry and that her goal isn't to stop me but to give me a couple of things to read when I had the chance to. I kept walking and she walked with me and talked while she searched through the booklets she had in her hands to pick out the two she wanted me to have, needless to say I thought she was very nice and polite.
The booklets she gave me were two Awake booklets, one on how to pick a religion and one on something else that I don't quite remember. Those who are familiar with Awake booklets know that they are booklets Jehovah's witnesses hand out to people to read. I am personally not very familiar with Jehovah's witnesses doctrine so can't offer any opinion on it right now, and honestly that is not the purpose of this entry.
So I took the booklets knowing at the back of my mind that I wasn't going to read all of it and that I was going to end up probably throwing it away. Right away a battle began in my conscience. Give it back and say no thank or take it and trash it when you are far enough that they can't see you. I should have so done the former but sadly I did the latter. While I was still within view, I flipped through pages and skimmed some of the points. Honestly I did pick up a few points but I was subconsciously bent on throwing it away.
As I intimated earlier I am not very familiar with jehovah's witness doctrine even though quite a few people I Know who are active witnesses. After this I will have to start asking them questions about their beliefs because I know zip. Even with little knowledge my position is not very gracious towards that and that is pobably from conclusions I have come to know other people make about their beliefs. I suppose I will have to face my prejudice head on soon.
When I was safely out of sight I threw the booklets in a bin and you can imagine the amount of guilt that descended on me. I felt like such a hypocrite. I could've just given them back because honestly what will a quota do for someone trying to carry a message across.
Perhaps I am over thinking it and frankly some people who give out flyers probably don't even believe in the cause they are disemminating information about but the fact remains that someone does and it will only be fair to them if I decline to take one all the time. This is more self refletive more than anything else lol but what's more we can save the environment :)
2 comments:
People handing out flyers or stopping me on the street is one of my pet hates yet I still experience the guilt you're referring to. Here in London they're not quite as polite as the woman you encountered. We have hundreds of these guys collecting for various charities all over central London. We call them "chuggers" from "charity" and "mugger". They don't seem to understand the word "no" and although I always say a "no thank you" and keep it moving, I've had abuse hurled at me, been called selfish, etc. etc. Meanwhile chuggers here get paid decent money and I always feel their aggressiveness is all in order to increase their income and not because of any genuine interest to help their charity. I now walk around with earphones on and pretend I can't hear them!
LOL @ chuggers. I feel you on the headphones but I resist the idea of someone making me do something I normally wouldn't do like putting my headphone on just to avoid hearing them. I feel I give them too much power by doing so.
I like to hear the natural sounds around me when I am walking on the streets and eavesdrop on other people's conversations when I'm on the trains...lol, I'm horrible I know.
The thing is that here in New York, people tune out the world and have their headphones on too much. That makes it hard to make any friends or interact with others as you go about your daily. Don't get me wrong, I like listening to my music when I can and feel like it but I do it because I want to not necessarily because I'm tuning the world out.
I would love to be able to meet and talk to people on the train and wherever possible it makes me feel less of an Island. That said, I totally understand why chuggers can drive people over the edge though lol
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