Greed vs. Need

My foray into church-going was brief and forced, and I can remember little but the fact that powdered peach drink is one of the most repulsive substances yet recorded. Morally, it left me a little unfinished. Now I've got a guilt complex, but none of the convenient religiously-related means of expiating it, from prayer to confession.

As a recent example, the devastating earthquake in Haiti has sent me probing, because it coincided with my need for new running shoes. How much should I give, when there's a crisis of such a magnitude? I felt like I couldn't give less than the cost of the pair of shoes. If I did, I would be conceiving of people's lives in fractions of shoes, which seemed heartless, especially when those could have been stitched together at one of the free trade zones in Haiti*. Those allowed companies to profit from the availability of cheap labour, without doing anything to strengthen the country's infrastructure or government. The weakness of both has only worsened the effect of the earthquake.

On the other hand, I couldn't afford both, at least not without having a dull, rather frugal month. And I did need new running shoes, although I could have lived with the many other shoes I own, many of which cost the equivalent of several pairs of the shoes under consideration. Although I am now an atheist, I briefly considered the possibility of an afterlife. What would be my defense if I was brought before some kind of court, and told to account for how I decided the piles of fashionable impracticality on the one side balanced out the abject human suffering on the other? I had to admit that, on many levels, I was not a righteous woman.

Once I established that, I bought the shoes. Then I did what many people have done when they felt they could no longer trust some deity to be perfectly objective. I decided to have faith in chance, so I flipped a coin. Heads, I would donate all of the money I had spent on shoes and tails, half of it. I'll let you guess where it landed.

If you would like to donate money to Haiti Earthquake Relief without this kind of stress, please check out one of the organizations on this list. You can take a measure of the devastation here, or listen to our Governor-General, Michaëlle Jean's, heartbreaking response here.

*Turns out it was a likely bet that my shoes were manufactured in China. Also, garments are usually produced in those free trade zones, but still.