so much concern and generosity, and yet....

Yesterday morning I went out for a walk and happened upon a lady I've talked to in the soup kitchen before. We chatted for a few minutes on her porch, and she invited me to come have lunch with her some time, and asked me not to forget her.
A little later on in the day, I was heading out to pick up some donations for our Harvest auction coming up, and came upon one of my other soup kitchen friends, and she was wandering down the road in hysterics, shouting after a van that was heading down the street.
I stopped her, and asked her what had happened, and she said her wheelchair had just been stolen, and she wasn't supposed to be on her knee but she was trying to get ahold of someone to get her a replacement chair until hers was found. A lady who had been on the phone at the time, came down and placed a call in to the police, and waited with us to help sort out the story and let her use the phone to call her worker.
Even in canvassing for donations for our auction, I've only had two outright no's, which is pretty impressive, since there is a considerable number of non-profit organizations in Bangor, and the few individual businesses in the get hit up for freebies/discounts all the time.
Yet, for all this good stuff happening in the city, there's something holding people back. There's a guard up. Judgmentalism. Control. People wanting things done their way or not at all. I find myself sinking into it really easily, lately. A cutting word here, one of those "if I were you..." statements, when no one asked my opinion in the first place, BLECH it's really not attractive.
Oh, and someone keeps knocking on my door at 4:30 in the morning. Next time, I'm thinking of having a few people over, sneak out the back door and start knocking on their van window and see how they like it. grr!