saving you saving me

  

Philip Guston - Bad Habits (1970)

Saving people is so redundant. It is so naive. And yet it is one of the most defining characteristics of mine.

I was walking home just now, sneezing and compressing my limbs into their smallest proportions, when I saw a tiny old lady with hands full of groceries steadily walking toward me. I was compelled to go up to her and offer to carry her bags home. I made eye contact but she wouldn't have it. I stopped, but she didn't notice. So I kept walking, feeling a little bit colder than before.

This happens every week, and in different scenarios.

I have often broken up fights; from street fights to best friends fighting to parents to cats. I've saved ants from drowning and I have taken numerous birds to the vet (none of them made it out). When I was six years old I jumped in the deep end to rescue an older girl from drowning -- I didn't know how to swim.

Less than a year ago I found a girl passed out in the washroom of some bar and carried her to a stranger's house and left my card for her. She probably thought my card says "Super(wo)man" or something.

What's funny is that I'm beginning to understand that this is not heroism, but being stupid. Yet I can't help it. I especially find it stupid when my help is not needed ("Tara, we don't need you to mediate the situation").

People don't need to be saved, especially the ones that are waiting to be saved.  I'm also against the idea of martyrdom and I guess that's the point of departure between aid and imposition: to be a martyr you are expecting a heavenly return and you are usually sacrificing something precious. I don't ever want any one to do that for me, and I won't do it either. Especially for the people I love, because I will only resent them in the long term.

Anyways. . . I guess I'm trying to say that I like making people happy. Sometimes too much.

Unless if you deserve to be sad, of course.