Question: have u ever felt like u could've helped someone but didn't?

Laura Fisk answered on 18 Jun 2019:

Yeah, all the time unfortunately. I’m mainly thinking about all the times I walk past somebody who seems to be homeless. I always try to acknowledge them and treat them as a human being, but whether to give money to everyone is a complex issue – there’s discussion as to whether it does help the person etc. But it is really difficult and I feel it every time – by ‘it’ I mean guilt, which in psychology terms is ‘when you feel like you’ve broken a rule or value you have’.
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It might not be fair or realistic to be able to help everyone, but ‘help everyone you can’ is a rule I do have for myself, and so on some level I am breaking it – so my guilt is justified. AT the same time, I simply don’t have all the money that’s needed. SO what I try to do is donate to charities, and engage with the politics of what leads to people being homeless. We need to fix that, and we need to fix it on a ‘bigger’ level than just the individual. But at the same time, the individual matters and they don’t know I might be doing that stuff ‘behind the scenes’ – and they probably wouldn’t care that much, given that as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggests, if our basic needs aren’t met then we have less ‘room’ to think beyond that – that kind of thinking is a luxury we can get into when we’ve got wnough food to eat, somewhere safe to be etc etc. So it’d be completely fair (I’d actually say essential) for someone to be like, ‘You’re not helping me, now – so what’s the point?”.
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So yeah, I definitely have felt like I could have helped someone but didn’t