Another Canvass Done With
What a relief to get it done. It's absolutely not my favourite pastime, and there's an understatement. I am not certain whether it's a sense of duty, guilt, or what it is that has me unable to declare a firm "no" when I'm asked to canvass for charitable institutions. Other than that I'm quite well aware that it's hard to recruit people for that most unpleasant of tasks. I know it first-hand, having myself been once one of those recruiters.
And not simply an area or district recruiter, but responsible for an entire city. An onerous, burdensome, most difficult, but pressing task. Charitable groups must raise their operating funds. They do it any way they can. Enlisting the assistance of volunteers is an effective method - encouraging willing people, often people who have a vested interest - to go door-to-door in their neighbourhood, to convince their neighbours to advance the interests of some cause.
For me, it's always involved charitable groups that support medical research or assistance to people suffering from medical conditions, or both. So when that recruiter calls, I'm a prime target. An unwilling one, but ripe for the picking. Just prick my conscience, tell me no one else is available, that they're not receiving any responses, and I invariably sigh, and agree, I'll do it.
This time it was for the Arthritis Society. Do I have arthritis? No, but my mother did, I dimly recall, and I've a friend who has arthritis, and I know some of my neighbours do, although they're not necessarily the ones who will respond to the appeal. Off I went, last week, on a dark evening, to begin. I'd put it off for long enough. Determined to at least make a start; the first time out is the most difficult.
I'd do the top half of the street, leave the bottom half for the next round. It's my usual modus operandi. And it works. The top half of the street where, coincidentally, I live, tends to host those most amenable to responding, and the most generous. Although, truth to tell, any positive response, however meagre, satisfies me, as it would most canvassers who go out in support of such causes.
It's those who shut their faces to you, then shut the door in your face, who leave me bemused and bothered. Those whom I know well, who inform me that they'll pass, this time, but know how to do it in a civil, friendly manner, have my respect; they're few and far between. Ah, but the ones whose faces light up when they see me in mutual recognition of our humanity and neighbourliness; give or not, make my day.
The experience is a humbling one. And it encourages me no end. From that experience I bring away the feeling of true appreciation and affection for those people with whom I live in fairly close proximity. Their response enhances an emotion of shared concerns, a recognition that all of us will at one time or another require medical treatment which funding of research will most certainly result in improved treatments.
And in the process, I re-acquaint myself with my many neighbours. In the process I also have learned, over the years, which houses will spurn my overtures, and over time and a series of encounters better forgotten, I've convinced myself there's no need to continue approaching them. Today I know that there are so many lonely people, so many people for whom my brief appearance at their front door is important, as well.
Someone, though we see one another on occasion briefly - in the most friendly but socially remote circumstances - who will invite me into their homes and unburden themselves of the trials and tribulations of current events. I become a sounding board, a quietly-listening and empathetic witness to the events in their lives over which they often have no real control, and through which they must find their way.
From that lovely, friendly woman who, when we first met 17 years earlier, had raven-black hair, and happily pushed a stroller with two infants, her husband striding contently along beside her, whose hair is now streaked with white, whose husband suddenly left. To the now-retired, 64-year-old neighbour whose wife left him because of his constant womanizing, who always confides to me his loneliness in his large well-kept house, who has now found contentment because he adopted a cat from the humane society.
Our neighbour halfway down the street who happens to be the chief oncologist of our local hospital, and who has just recently undergone treatment for prostate cancer, greets me warmly, and generously, happy to pass on words of encouragement each time I drop by representing another charity. Another neighbour whose prostate cancer treatment pre-dated his, and more recently underwent heart by-pass surgery bemoans his sudden elderliness, and I commiserate.
Parents of children whom I knew and often spoke with when they were five, six, seven years old, now married, or attending university, tell me of their children's successes, and their new liberated plans for their lives, sans dependents. Today happened to be an overcast, but mild day, and in the mid-afternoon I set off to complete the canvass. I carefully omitted calling at those houses where I knew from long past experience I'd be unwelcome.
And confining myself to knocking on doors which have always responded civilly, a matter of several hours permitted me to complete the canvass. There were more than enough generous responses to make me realize that the bottom half of the street is, after all, equally endowed with people concerned with their society and with responding to requests for charitable donations as the top half I'd convinced myself were more responsive.
It's sometimes a matter of timing. When people are working out their bank balances and find themselves temporarily short, like the man, now retired, who moved to the street six years ago, with a woman half his age with whom he had two very young children, whose wife left him for a younger man. He wasn't averse to carefully explaining to me that his finances were a tad tight of late - although truth to tell he never did offer to respond; his wife had.
It's perfectly all right if someone, approached to support the work of a particular charity, has no interest in that particular institution; people do often respond only to those medical charities with which they have a vested interest. And, conversely, often enough those people who reveal to you that they or a member of their family are undergoing treatments for cancer, for example, still have no interest in responding.
We're different, we have our idiosyncrasies, our traits and our inspirations, to be a part of the general community, or keep ourselves removed from it. The choice, in a free society, is ours.
And not simply an area or district recruiter, but responsible for an entire city. An onerous, burdensome, most difficult, but pressing task. Charitable groups must raise their operating funds. They do it any way they can. Enlisting the assistance of volunteers is an effective method - encouraging willing people, often people who have a vested interest - to go door-to-door in their neighbourhood, to convince their neighbours to advance the interests of some cause.
For me, it's always involved charitable groups that support medical research or assistance to people suffering from medical conditions, or both. So when that recruiter calls, I'm a prime target. An unwilling one, but ripe for the picking. Just prick my conscience, tell me no one else is available, that they're not receiving any responses, and I invariably sigh, and agree, I'll do it.
This time it was for the Arthritis Society. Do I have arthritis? No, but my mother did, I dimly recall, and I've a friend who has arthritis, and I know some of my neighbours do, although they're not necessarily the ones who will respond to the appeal. Off I went, last week, on a dark evening, to begin. I'd put it off for long enough. Determined to at least make a start; the first time out is the most difficult.
I'd do the top half of the street, leave the bottom half for the next round. It's my usual modus operandi. And it works. The top half of the street where, coincidentally, I live, tends to host those most amenable to responding, and the most generous. Although, truth to tell, any positive response, however meagre, satisfies me, as it would most canvassers who go out in support of such causes.
It's those who shut their faces to you, then shut the door in your face, who leave me bemused and bothered. Those whom I know well, who inform me that they'll pass, this time, but know how to do it in a civil, friendly manner, have my respect; they're few and far between. Ah, but the ones whose faces light up when they see me in mutual recognition of our humanity and neighbourliness; give or not, make my day.
The experience is a humbling one. And it encourages me no end. From that experience I bring away the feeling of true appreciation and affection for those people with whom I live in fairly close proximity. Their response enhances an emotion of shared concerns, a recognition that all of us will at one time or another require medical treatment which funding of research will most certainly result in improved treatments.
And in the process, I re-acquaint myself with my many neighbours. In the process I also have learned, over the years, which houses will spurn my overtures, and over time and a series of encounters better forgotten, I've convinced myself there's no need to continue approaching them. Today I know that there are so many lonely people, so many people for whom my brief appearance at their front door is important, as well.
Someone, though we see one another on occasion briefly - in the most friendly but socially remote circumstances - who will invite me into their homes and unburden themselves of the trials and tribulations of current events. I become a sounding board, a quietly-listening and empathetic witness to the events in their lives over which they often have no real control, and through which they must find their way.
From that lovely, friendly woman who, when we first met 17 years earlier, had raven-black hair, and happily pushed a stroller with two infants, her husband striding contently along beside her, whose hair is now streaked with white, whose husband suddenly left. To the now-retired, 64-year-old neighbour whose wife left him because of his constant womanizing, who always confides to me his loneliness in his large well-kept house, who has now found contentment because he adopted a cat from the humane society.
Our neighbour halfway down the street who happens to be the chief oncologist of our local hospital, and who has just recently undergone treatment for prostate cancer, greets me warmly, and generously, happy to pass on words of encouragement each time I drop by representing another charity. Another neighbour whose prostate cancer treatment pre-dated his, and more recently underwent heart by-pass surgery bemoans his sudden elderliness, and I commiserate.
Parents of children whom I knew and often spoke with when they were five, six, seven years old, now married, or attending university, tell me of their children's successes, and their new liberated plans for their lives, sans dependents. Today happened to be an overcast, but mild day, and in the mid-afternoon I set off to complete the canvass. I carefully omitted calling at those houses where I knew from long past experience I'd be unwelcome.
And confining myself to knocking on doors which have always responded civilly, a matter of several hours permitted me to complete the canvass. There were more than enough generous responses to make me realize that the bottom half of the street is, after all, equally endowed with people concerned with their society and with responding to requests for charitable donations as the top half I'd convinced myself were more responsive.
It's sometimes a matter of timing. When people are working out their bank balances and find themselves temporarily short, like the man, now retired, who moved to the street six years ago, with a woman half his age with whom he had two very young children, whose wife left him for a younger man. He wasn't averse to carefully explaining to me that his finances were a tad tight of late - although truth to tell he never did offer to respond; his wife had.
It's perfectly all right if someone, approached to support the work of a particular charity, has no interest in that particular institution; people do often respond only to those medical charities with which they have a vested interest. And, conversely, often enough those people who reveal to you that they or a member of their family are undergoing treatments for cancer, for example, still have no interest in responding.
We're different, we have our idiosyncrasies, our traits and our inspirations, to be a part of the general community, or keep ourselves removed from it. The choice, in a free society, is ours.
posted by Pieface @ 5:43 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home