✭𝓛𝓪 𝓒𝓪𝓻𝓭𝓮𝓷𝓪𝔃✭

pp-friendly if you return what you stole

-It was about 19 years ago, on a Wednesday? No.. Thursday, aye, a Thursday it was.
My dad picked me up early from school that day, "Let's go get lunch" he said..or something along those lines.

I don't remember everything very clearly, just this one scene: it was a winter day.. or sure as hell it felt like one,
thick fog everywhere, I could only see about a couple of steps ahead. We were headed to my favorite restaurant, we'd go there often.
An old woman owned the place, a nice lady in her 50's if I recall correctly. On occasion there would be a man sitting left to the entrance, a beggar..for lack of a better word.
No-one really cared about him all that much, people came and left and he would be ignored all day.. I felt sorry for him, yknow?

I asked my dad "Why does that man sit there?" to which he just looked at me, I could see on his face that he was really thinking about what to say or how to explain it to me, it made the most sense to him to say "You know, some of us are more fortunate than others, you're one of the more fortunate ones so far son."

Now as you can imagine, I didn't really know what to think. Little 11 year old me wouldn't be able to comprehend what my dad was thinking at the time.
After about 20 minutes of waiting, the old lady brought us what we had ordered, we ate in silence and when we were done, my dad paid and guess what? This time he let me keep the change.
I was happy about him giving me money, we didn't have much and it was rare that I would get an allowance. We walked through the door when something in me just took control and I offered my money to the beggar outside.
He teared up at the sight of me, he said I was kind and he thanked me for it from the bottom of his heart.
We kept on walking, about 5 minutes later my dad stopped and said this: "You know son, good intentions might have bad consequences, we don't know who that man is and what he will do with that money. Maybe the reason why he is always dependent on others is because he can afford to not change and keep doing what he's doing. The kinder option might just have been to let him be.
Give a man a fish and he will be having a meal, teach a man how to fish and he will benefit from it his entire life."

His words really changed my perspective on life, I can only stand here before you today, as successful as I am, thanks to his lesson that day.