There are many things we can do to be a better citizen. This Christmas my friend Yinh, Rob, and I traveled to many metropolitan areas of LA to allocate our donations.
Besides the greater amount of donations that three of us have prepared this year, another thing we did differently from last year’s self-volunteering work is that we chose various locations to dispatch these packages. From LA downtown Skid Row to Santa Monica.
One observation I had was that more people on the street are getting random drop-off items from helpers now. These helpers dash through the area and throw food right in front of the people on the street and then leave without saying anything. And people on the street seem inured to receiving in such an impetuous manner which I called the minimalistic interaction.
On this volunteering day, we also met Jay, an artist from Philadelphia who came to LA to promote his splash painting and unfortunately stuck amid this pandemic. Jay’s got unadorned humor and a voluble east coast accent. Three of us standing in the park listening to his personal anecdote for almost an hour until I couldn’t feel my legs in the dark winter evening. Therefore I politely interrupted his speech and send a warm goodbye. In fact, he wasn’t the only person we met that day have gushed out their stories. Interesting or not, I can always relate to them through the belied reality.
