Rueing a Failure.

Having rushed about all morning and done some shopping in Uttoxeter, I finally took a rest sitting on a stack of plastic bags containing garden peat outside a DIY store. I started to roll a cigarette when a thin and slightly dishevelled young man walked past, and then walked back to me. ‘Can I buy a roll up off you?’ he asked. I gave him the one I’d filled with tobacco but hadn’t licked yet. He held out a hand containing a few meagre coins and asked ‘How much?’ I declined payment of course, and he walked away finishing the rolling of the cigarette.

I thought about it later and realised that I’d failed miserably. What I should have given him was the spare pack of tobacco I keep in my backpack. He had that lean and hungry look suggestive of a difficult start in life, and it occurs to me now that he probably wasn’t habituated to generosity. Such an act might have thrown a switch in his consciousness and changed – even if ever so slightly – his perception of the world and its harshness. He might even have walked a better road and been a better, more positive person.

Then again, he might not. I might be completely wrong about him and his situation. And I’m not so naïve as to presume that one unexpected gift is likely to make a great deal of difference to the way a person sees the world.

But you never know, do you? A 50g pack of rolling tobacco costs around £38 at the moment, and there was a time, when I was approaching my own down and out stage, when £38 would have seemed like a very great deal of money. But my own life has changed and now I can afford it, so it might have been worth the try.

For what else can one little person like me do to make some sort of difference to the human condition? I can’t stop the suffering of ordinary people in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, or any of the other places where despots rain down random death and disablement on the innocent. But if I have the chance to make one small difference to one person’s life, I think I should take it without a second thought. Maybe I’ll get another chance on another day.