Opinion

He waited a few seconds for a response from a woman clutching a tote and a phone, but when she studiously avoided eye contact, he moved on. “I’m hungry.”

It was unsettling to hear such a simple plea, to watch everyone ignore it, to ignore it myself. I had a twenty in my bag, and I didn’t need it — not for that day in New York and not in the grander scheme either.

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So why didn’t I give it to him?

Did I fear, as people often do, that my money would be spent “the wrong way”— on drugs or drink?

This is the self-justifying attitude that Pope Francis, in a 2017 interview, characterized as “if I give him money, he’ll just spend it on a glass of wine.”

Not me. Even if that were true (it’s not), I know I can’t cure anyone’s hypothetical addiction by withholding help. And since I use alcohol, cannabis and sleeping pills to cushion my already warm and well-fed life, I don’t judge the spending habits of less lucky people. I agree with the pope, who went on to say: “If a glass of wine is his only happiness in life, then so be it.”

So ... why didn’t I give?

Because I bow to the conventional wisdom that money should be given cautiously, that there’s a right way and a wrong way to donate. Right: setting up a monthly autopay after looking at the charity research platform GiveWell or CharityNavigator. Wrong: handing cash to someone you don’t know on a subway platform.

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I’ll donate that $20 later, I promised myself, to a reputable organization that feeds the hungry. My $20 will help more people that way, anyway.

This is true, in a “give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish” kind of way. If that organization is doing its job — and, yes, we should check — it will provide more meals with my $20 than I could, or, even better, help the city’s unhoused population provide for themselves.

But I still feel ashamed of tamping down my human sympathy and hoping for my train to arrive. I don’t want to be someone who stands paralyzed as I calculate how much further my $20 could go in the budget of a nonprofit than in the hands of a hungry man.

“There are many ways to justify........

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