16. The Rule

This probably should've been mentioned earlier. There was a rule I made at the beginning of my journey; I am not allowed to directly ask people for money or for anything worth money to that person. So by this rule, going into a coffee shop and getting the waitress to give you a free coffee is ok - as it doesn't cost her anything - and I've got quite good at that, though I'd have a qualm with sitting down next to someone and asking them to buy me a coffee. Essentially the rule means no begging. There is no 'glory' in begging, anyone can do it. If you needed 20 pounds to get home and had NO way of getting the money, pretty quickly you'd start to ask people for it, and I'd bet pretty quickly you'd get it. I've been there before, I've done that, and I've made quite a lot of money very quickly. More than I get from work even.

A dilemma occurs when I feel that I may have slightly manipulated my rule. I approach a woman outside a supermarket with my bike, looking a bit trampy, and with a some shards of change in my hand. I ask her how much a bottle of water costs in the supermarket. She tells me and then gives me 2 euros. It was very generous of her.

The dilemma here lay in that I pretty much knew how much a bottle of water in the aldimarktcosts. If I'm being truthful, I know the sole reason I asked was just to see if she'd give me some money. The trampy look, bringing the change in the hand and the bike, it was all apart of the plan to let her know I might have needed a little help. Well actually the trampy look was slightly unavoidable. Though the real issue here is; Was this essentially just asking for money? I find it difficult to work out since the little red man on my shoulder is far smarter than that other guy, who I think may have actually just given up quite a long time ago and unfortunately doesn't really turn up for these debates anymore. I figure I didn't really ask for anything, I just gave someone an opportunity to display their generosity if they so wished to. However a side of me sees the manipulation of my holy rule, sees the floodgate opening if I allow this, and decides that I won't do anything like this again... Though I cycle off knowing that really I probably will.