Don’t overthink helping a bankrupt friend
My friend has always lived beyond her means; she makes horrible financial decisions. Finally, she declared bankruptcy last year. She still isn’t getting by. She has cut expenses and stopped smoking, but still struggles desperately to pay rent, find coins for the laundromat and keep driving her car. If she moved to a cheaper apartment with a roommate and took transit she could ‘just’ get by, but she prefers the privacy of her own place and convenience of a car. Occasionally over the last year, I have bought her some bags of groceries. She never asks me to, and has always been thankful. However, unless she truly hits the bottom, she may never make decisions necessary to change her life.
Is it more ethical for me to funnel these donations to my local food bank or keep giving them directly to someone who needs it?
It was, apparently, Yogi Berra who first said, “You can’t think and hit a baseball at the same time.” Of course, he also said “You’d better cut that pizza into four slices; I’m not hungry enough to eat six.”
Despite Yogi’s failure at pizzamath, his notion that over-cogitation gets in the way of performance will be quickly affirmed by anyone who has ever tried to drive a golf ball, enjoy a symphony or relish an enthusiastic tumble between the sheets. Sometimes, overthinking sucks the joy out of what you’re doing. That’s what’s happening to you. Your letter (the original was much longer than the version above) tells in great detail about decisions your friend has made, what she’s given up and so on. That suggests that you’ve turned her problem into your problem. In one sense that’s lovely; you care deeply about your friend and it’s hard to watch someone make bad decisions, especially the same ones over and over. So you’re lying awake at night, worrying about her and fretting about how you can change her life. But you can’t. She’s a big girl, and you can’t rescue her. When people are spending more than they’re making, there are two (and only two) legal solutions: spend less or find a way to bring in more. She’s knows what she has to do but “prefers” not to do it. That’s her call, even though it’s a bad one. Which brings us to your groceries. You’re worried that the 25 bucks worth of food you drop off is “enabling” your friend to continue making bad decisions. But these gifts aren’t large enough to have any significant impact on that; if you were making her car payments or paying the rent, that would be a different thing altogether. I’m not criticizing or minimizing your generosity. Quite the opposite, in fact. Your occasional gift of food is a well-proportioned, totally appropriate act of kindness — a nice, gracious thing to do. It lets your friend know you care — without taking away her freedom, or responsibility, to run her own life.
Stop overthinking the simple gifts you offer. It’s not your job to manage your friend’s affairs, and trying to do so will suck the joy out of your kindness — both for you and for her. Send questions to star.ethics@yahoo.ca