People Are Terrible, Everything Sucks, Have Some Pie.
Yesterday was my Birthday. The day before that my neighbor and his girlfriend meandered on into my house while I was at work and stole all my physical video games and consoles. Like any nerd with an unhealthy obsession with their coping habits I imagined myself a detective. One thing you’ll learn from detectives (in comics, books, tv shows and movies) is that you should always trust your gut. Unfortunately my brain got in the way.
Today my wife got to watch as what was left unsold (hopefully all of it not already recovered) was taken by the police and the dirty thieves were taken away. I say dirty because they were constantly coming over here to ask if they could use a shower and I hadn’t seen them in a couple of days. Point is I think I know how the cops located them.
But it all got me thinking. Even though I suspected them, and they were the first people to cross my mind, I put them low on the list. My wife and I had been helping him out since he was 15 (he’s now in his mid twenties). He knew when my birthday was. They asked us for rides to get groceries,food from our house, cigarettes, showers and various other sundries on a constant basis. In other words, we were an asset. Because after years of being used and abused by people who were supposed to be my friends, helping people who wouldn’t help themselves and finding out how low a priority I was on most people’s lists…that’s how I think of people. How much am I going to be around them? Can I avoid them, and if not can I make myself an asset so they don’t screw me over? What are their motives?
I knew his motives. Get ahead by any means necessary. But what does ahead mean for each person. For him and people like him it just means they have more stuff than other people. Hypothetically in his head I’m sure he’s very generous. Why if he had all that I do (which is only a lot given where I live and what I come from) he’d be raining gifts on people. He WILL justify this to himself as not only excusable, but deserved on my part. He’ll do something like it again to me or anyone else given half the chance. And yet sending him to prison till he’s 40 doesn’t make me happy. It makes me wonder what mistakes I’ve made that could have altered my future so profoundly.
Because here’s the thing, we all (some of the mentally ill aside) believe that not only are we good people, we’re also the hero of THE story. I mean sure, everyone’s the hero of their own little worlds, but isn’t the universe all about me?
As dumb and as ridiculous as it is to feel betrayed by a pill junkie, I still did. Because see, I’m the hero. I was helping this poor boy reclaim his life and work towards a better tomorrow, or some bullshit. But what I was really doing was assuaging my own guilt. I know what it’s like to be hungry. I know what it’s like for your life to fall down around your ears. I always wanted someone to come rescue me, and basing my actions around that I made an easy target.
Easy, but not dumb. I know when I’m being taken advantage of, and I cared less about that than the feeling I got from believing I was making a difference in someone’s life. Because no matter how often and hilariously Karma gets proven non-existent I still want it to be true. I want to send good things out into the world and get more good things to send out all over again.
You notice how many times I say I and me there? Well guess what buttercup? You do it too. We’re all just animals. I mean sure there’s a layer of intelligence and hopefully a smattering of empathy, cultural norms and morals, passed down experience and wisdom added to our own collection of memories, but deep down we’re all about instant gratification for our innermost desires.
We’re all selfish. But selfish isn’t the dirty word it’s portrayed as. If you save a life because YOU couldn’t stand by and watch someone die, or YOU wanted to be a hero, or YOU empathized with their plight are you more of a hero than someone who does it because “it was the right thing to do” or less of one? I mean what determines the right thing? If you save a serial killer who goes on to kill again are you less of a hero? Is it really the selflessness that we reward, or the idea of selflessness that we give mythical status?
We live in a world of grays but the shades do matter, to us as individuals, and for most of those shades, as a society. So of course the things that are useful to society are held up in reverence.The problem is that we have different wants, different desires. We’re just too damn different. We the most complex simple creatures on the planet. The thief at my door may want my stuff to feed their habit and therefore justify to themselves that I was an asshole for not helping every time they needed me, for not feeding and clothing and bathing them, gently tucking them in at night with a kiss on the forehead and a bottle of Quaaludes. All I want is to find some happiness in this world and share it with as many people as possible. But we both act with the same defining drive. WANT.
What are we willing to do for what we want? How well can we stave off the devil on our shoulder that tells us it’s ok to do bad things to “bad people”. Now don’t get me wrong there’s some real shit tier talent out their. People with no self control, murderers and rapists and people who talk in theaters. And I’m not forgiving those who have literally trespassed against me. The trust is gone and never coming back. Actions matter and should have real world consequences. But, 15 to 20 is a long time to pay for a brief act. Are you the same person you were five years ago? Ten? They say people never really change, but I’ve seen a few of them pull it off. So I have to wonder how little resemblance the person walking out of prison will have to the one walking in.
And here’s where we look at how everything sucks. The thieving neighbor came from a shitty family of drug addicts. He was smoking, drinking and doing drugs at 15. He’s died and been brought back from an overdose. He has been trained his entire life to believe that this is what life is and he can only think in the confines of that prison. Does that excuse him? Absolutely not. And now, after an admittedly bad mistake he’s going to prison. Possibly privately owned, and based around punishment instead of rehabilitation. One day he’ll get out (with a plea deal probably a lot sooner than 15 to 20) and he’ll go back to doing drugs and stealing. That’ll be his life until he dies from an overdose, stealing from the wrong person or a bear attack.
Unless that’s not what happens. Maybe he turns his life around. Maybe he helps a lot of people. Maybe he dies at 100 surrounded by family and friends and is commemorated as the greatest hero the world has ever know. And so I have to weigh that. Because if he goes to prison the chances of anything like that second scenario become vanishingly small.
But let’s be real. I’m not dropping the charges. I’m not giving him another chance. Because he didn’t just hurt me, her hurt the person I care about more than anything else in the world. My wife. We were only relatively clueless for a day. I used my super sleuthing powers to find him on camera along with her and the information on her ID. By which I mean I found my games at Gamestop and proved they were mine with Pokemon saves. But that night she couldn’t sleep. Every sound was an intruder, every shadow a menacing threat. We helped him and he betrayed us. Some people can’t be saved from their id, and I have to live with the fact that I can’t bring myself to even try with one more. Some hero.
