Sage

For what would you ask, if you knew you would not be refused? Are you fully prepared to repay the kindness, the favour, the debt? Permission asked, and granted, becomes debt. Do not ask for permission if you do not wish to incur debt.

Would you ask, anyway, if you knew the answer was, ‘No’? And why? Would you endeavour to prevail upon your petitioned benefactor to reconsider her or his response? Would that not but demonstrate your desperation, likely encouraging diminished respect sufficient to burn that bridge towards future entreaties, even if the current one were reluctantly bestowed?

Is it not an intrusion to ask in the first place? Is it not an admission of the self-indulgence of personal want, need, or desire to ask in the first place? Or, in asking, are you merely passive-aggressively assessing the response of the one asked?

If you have to ask at all, you are trespassing into unwelcome territory. If your need is evident, fulfilment of that need will be forthcoming on its own, or in indifference withheld .

In front of the Post Office, there used to be a man of middle age, of ethnic origin other than Caucasian, who stood seemingly proudly in every weather, obviously sightless, though with no other apparent incapacity. With no sign, no word vocalised, no indication of need other than the cap held in his unobtrusively extended cupped hands, not hopefully, but gratefully, this noble man awaited the gifts of those who felt and thought freely to give. I never failed to to put money in his cap. Often, I would go out of my way to put money in his cap. I always said, softly, as I did it, ‘Thank you.’ He was not a beggar. A beggar, begs. The privilege was mine. He was a sage.

There is certainly no shame in begging. Those, though, who, like flowers, know with confidence that they will receive from the beneficent universe the light, the water, and the earth they need to sustain them, to ensure their blossoming, they will most surely be blessed.  Without asking, these most worthy souls receive.