Pay it forward: Art Fairs, Anger, the death of chilvary

The world is a dangerous place, not because of 
those who do evil, but because of those who 
look on and do nothing. —Albert Einstein

I had an art fair this weekend, an outside art fair. I make sure that I can do the heavy lifting myself, and outside of 2 glass cases, I can lift everything. Packing up today, there was a middle-aged man sitting in the park, watching me go back and forth loading my truck. He had been there since I first started, at least a half an hour. I got another woman artist to help me lift the cases in, and after an initial try, I realized to be sure the case safely made it into the truck bed I needed additional help. I asked the man to come over & help us lift, and he did. I thanked him, and he immediately went back to sitting there & staring into space.

A few minutes later, 2 teenage boys came & helped the man stare off into space. They watched every trip with every wire panel, trestles, pedestals and table I labored thru. All of a sudden, I was angry with these men. I know I didn’t know them, and they had no OBLIGATION to help me, but they could have easily walked with me a couple of trips and I would have been out of there an hour sooner. The year before, I had a great sweet man totally help me set up at the show. He had been early to play a football game, and right when the other team members showed up, we had been done setting up. I had taken it as good karma, and knew that I would go out into the world and pass it on, help someone who needed and appreciated it just because I could, and it would make his or her day better. They did a movie about this called “Pay it forward”.

When I was out by my truck I stated to a couple of the artists that I could not watch these guys watching me toil away anymore. I asked, “is chivalry dead? Do men not help women anymore? Am I too old to have men care whether or not they help me because I am not as “pretty” as I used to be?”
The artists replied, “Chivalry is dead!”

Meanwhile, the men having over heard, turned around the other way so they had their backs to me. Just to paint the picture completely, these men where not locked in conversation. They were not watching a game on the field. They were awkwardly staring at different angles of the horizon. Endlessly.

Bruce Lipton compared our system of organs in the human body to an economic system. He talks about how everywhere in the body, the slack is taken up, and the cells are autonomous but also connected. The heart HAS to work for a leg muscle to be able to do its job. IF the leg muscle is working faster, the heart is pumping faster. The heart muscle doesn’t take the request for more support personally, it supports the leg muscle with the nutrients and oxygen it needs.

We are all one: how we treat each other will be how we ourselves are treated. If one of us still needs help or food, or a roof over our heads, then there is a possibility of that happening to all of us.

The guides are giving me the picture of a 4-hitch team of horses pulling a heavy load of logs. If one of the lead horses does not pull, the load becomes heavier to the other horses. What should be a straight line becomes an arc: the working pulling horse is going faster while the slacker horse is barely moving. The horse behind him cannot move forward- there is a horse standing where he is supposed to be. Perhaps the driver notices the lazy horse, and he replaces him with one that does the job. Or, the whole team gets whipped by the driver, trying to get the load moved forward, not caring who is punished for the lack of impulsion.
If you disagree with this, I would love to hear your input. I know these men didn’t have to or need to help me.

When do you feel it is common decency to offer to help? Do you believe in everyone being “in it for them” regardless of how another is in need or suffering? Was I at fault because I did not ask them for additional help? (It also occurred to me that perhaps the men were having an argument, and I was in a bad mood having them watch me haul my booth away because they had that energy of aggression and anxiety with each other & I was emphatically feeling their emotions).