What I learned from Begging in Melbourne in the 90's?

The  journey to Melbourne was unpleasant. Unshaven and dressed in shabby tracksuit bottoms, I wandered towards my appointed meeting spot on Chapel Street, a district known for its fine dining and shopping experience.

It was the morning  after the night before, and empty wine bottles and other remnants of trash adorned the walkway. 

With each step, the brick in my stomach seemed to gain mass and weight. I did not want to go where I was headed, and once I arrived, I did not want to do what I was supposed to do.

Contrary  to my usual headlong rush into new challenges, I stopped and rested for a few moments, sitting on a nearby stoop of a dilapidated building, trying to wrap my mind around the task ahead: Begging for the day’s wedges.

It was the early 90’s, and I was visiting Australia as part of my lifelong study on human behavior – specifically I was attempting to understand the source of personal energy.

I wanted  to know the source  of my passion, energy and enthusiasm. Was I wired differently? Financially, I didn’t need to beg, I was gratefully doing well. Emotionally and psychologically, however, I needed to overcome some fears.

After completing my rest on the stoop, I knew I couldn’t procrastinate any more. To begin, I found a moderately trafficked spot. I thought, ‘Perhaps I should attempt a practice run.’

I extended both my hands out, palms down. Even pretending to beg was terrifying.  At that  moment an elderly woman was walking my way. ‘Easy, I can do this’, I thought. ‘Now all I have to do is...’ Yet I couldn’t even look at her. Twisting my hands into the proper begging position felt impossible. Ten or fifteen minutes passed, but the squeamish feeling remained.

The challenge was too much for me, but why? After all, this was Melbourne, Australia, and I was Kevin Kelly from Ballintubber, Ireland – a sleepy village in the West of Ireland with two bars, a shop, a school, a post office and historic ruins. Ballintubber was a dot on the map, not a destination.

Nobody knew me here. This was the perfect begging environment for an Irish, habitually Armani-suited businessman. None of that seemed to matter because some mysterious power had gripped me: Fear! Just then, I noticed my buddy, Chris, in the distance.

“Well, you aren’t going to make much money with your hands in that position,” he said to me. “I can’t do it,” I moaned. ‘Can’t do’ was, until this moment, a two-word phrase not present in my daily vocabulary.

“Yes, you can.” Chris fired back. “Look, I’ve got two dollars already.”

Although I was grateful for the encouragement, his words had the anything but the desired effect. His success as a beggar really sickened me. If he had failed as well, at least we could have moaned together.

As this silly scene played out, I butted up against one of the grand dilemmas of the human  experience and encountered a choice: Expose myself to potential failure or maintain my self- image. Was the potential dent to my ego from failing – greater than the negative impact of begging?

“Get up and ask people!” Chris commanded. “What do you say to them?” I asked Chris, in hope of  discovering some sort of secret verbal formula for performing the task with success. “Can you give me some money?” he replied.

Ugh, not what I was hoping for. Summoning my last reserves of courage, I stood up. Within seconds, I had walked right past three people. Words were  not coming easily. Finally, having backed myself into a corner, I resigned myself to taking action. Without a second thought, I approached an elderly man.

“Can I have some money, please?“ I enquired. “No,” came his stern reply, and he had barely left the scene when I started to laugh. I laughed so much it hurt. It was a laughter mixed with delight and despair. Delight, because it felt like a huge boulder had been lifted off my shoulder. Despair, because some people just aren’t nice, and begging certainly isn’t good for your health. With renewed energy, I proceeded to ask four other people for donations but they all refused to give as much as a cent. So much for the Australian bond with the Irish.

When it was time to reconvene with my friends, I discovered that Zack, Diana and Chris – all fellow course participants – had all been given money. I had nothing to report. “How the bloody hell did you get so much?” I enquired.

Zack had got over six dollars from telling people the whole story of who he was, where he was from, and the theme of the exercise: ‘The death of the ego’.

Remembering the old saying that

‘if you keep doing what you are doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve got’, I decided to adopt Zack’s strategy.

While my friends went off to give their money away, I kept on the scent of my first dime. I approached a group of young people and insisted on telling them the story, I  was  rewarded  with  another  negative response.

Pride gone, I pleaded with them. “Fifty cents, twenty cents, ten cents, anything please,” I said. Not a cent came. I began to realize for the first time in my life what it must feel like for those who are forced to beg in order to subsist. This experience was the catalyst for a major change in my attitude  towards these courageous people. On my way back to the car,remembering I had brought some money with me for a cup of coffee, I took ten dollars out of my pocket and gave it to a beggar who was sitting nearby. I was forever changed.

On that warm, humid day in Melbourne  I learned that our pride, our ego and our fear of failing often keep us from achieving greatness, keeping us stuck in jobs we don’t like, working with people we can’t stand, engaging in pursuits we’re not wholeheartedly passionate about. They all prevent us from discovering happiness, leading lives full of meaning and offering our art to the world.

That day I faced my greatest fears – the fear of being humiliated and the fear of failing. This wasn’t about the money. It was about me having the guts to beg and feel like a piece of shit in everyone’s eyes. It was about getting over my ego in the knowing that I’m much more than this. It was about knowing that failure is okay as long as you learn and grow from it. That day I grew six feet.