Guilt As Charged

Gentle readers, I’m in crisis.

Okay, what else is new. But this time, it’s a crisis of conscience. Like most of you in the states, I received a $1200 direct deposit into my bank account a short while ago. And also like most of you, I immediately set out to spend it. I paid a few small bills, bought a Blu-ray or two, and started pops off down the BD road as well by buying him a basic BD player.

But my major purchase was one I had waited for patiently for a long while. I bought a beginner DSLR; a Canon EOS 250D, better known stateside as the Rebel SL3, with a basic kit lens and an additional 50/1.8 prime lens, so I can finally get started with that whole photography thing I’ve been fussing with for so long.

Yay!

But you see, that’s where the guilt comes in. I only received that money because of a scary virus that so far has killed over a million people worldwide, around 95000 of them in our own country. It continues to wreak havoc and take lives as our worthless president is only worried about his re-election campaign. So many people have and continue to sacrifice everything to save lives; families go hungry and worry if they’d have a roof over their heads tomorrow… all manner of misery you can image is befalling decent people, and here I sit with a shiny new camera in my grabby hands.

How am I supposed to make peace with that? How am I not going to feel guilty in the pit of my stomach every time I take a silly little photo with that camera? Should I have donated the money to a food bank or some other charity? I didn’t though. I used it for myself.

And that just adds more fuel to the fire in my conscience.

Maybe I’ll heed the advice Tom Hanks have to Matt Damon in “Saving Private Ryan” as he lay dying in the battlefield. Maybe I’ll do something good with that camera. Maybe I’ll bring about big changes in some way. Maybe I’ll benefit humanity with it somehow.

Some massive maybes, those.

But for now, I’ll just deal with that pang in the pit of my stomach. And as far as those maybes… I’ll keep you posted.