Today, I offered to welcome a French couchsurfing roadtripper named Jonas, who sent out a last-minute request, and if he found no one, was planning on sleeping in his car. We met up at a bar. He tried to leave without paying, but I paid for his beer to make it okay. Next, we got dinner at a restaurant next to my flat. He suggested leaving the restaurant without paying, and I told him absolutely not. I asked why he would do that, and he said because he is not at home, and because it's important to violate the rules sometimes. He started telling me stories about encounters with the police in every country he has visited so far on his trip. When we left that restaurant, I told him I no longer felt comfortable hosting him. First he tried to convince me to feel otherwise, then he became aggressive, and then he walked away.
Tonight is a State Of Emergency in Prague due to flooding. The lowlands and the wetlands are being evacuated. I live in an elevated neighborhood, and far enough from the river. Jonas' car is parked just a few blocks away from me. Still, I want no one to have to sleep in their car on a night like this. Also, if Jonas gives me a bad review on couchsurfing, my plans to couchsurf this summer will be less viable, which could be a problem now that I've finalized plans to sublet my flat.
Both of us want happiness and to avoid suffering; in that important respect we are the same; and yet, we somehow find ourselves diametrically opposed. I mistrust his empathy enough that I think he could steal valuables from the flat, such as my roommates' laptops, which would cause suffering, and he wants a warm, dry place to stay at night, which will prevent him from suffering. On earth is there any solution? It is as if we are two chess players, meeting each other from a predetermined position, and don't even wish to be in competition, but only have a finite number of choices available to us. One teaching I've read about for escaping this is releasing yourself from attachment, but releasing myself from attachment to my roommates' attachments their laptops seems quite similar to releasing oneself from attachment to a restaurant staff's attachments to their paychecks.
I can detach myself easily enough from my couchsurfing worries- there are an infinity of ways to walk this earth, and it is no impossible task to choose another one. Perhaps OkCupid will become my Couchsurfing, for example. But I cannot detach myself from Jonas' suffering in his car tonight, and it is so unfair that his not suffering should be positioned in opposition to my not suffering (or my roommates not suffering). Okay- it is his behavior in the restaurant that caused this problem- but from a far-enough-back perspective, that is quite beside the point. His behavior in the restaurant was due in turn to other things similar to chess. The animal part of him will feel suffering, and I don't see what that has to do with it, or why it must answer to the consequences of his sociopathic intellect. Furthermore, as a reasoning being, it becomes necessary in this case for me to be the instrument causing someone's suffering: my own, my roommates', and Jonas's, or more than one of those at once.
I seek Perfection in the way I treat others, but insofar as the world works like this, it seems impossible. I don't understand what I could have done differently in this case without being unfair to myself and my roommates based on my reasoning capacities.
We actually DID welcome a sociopath for a couple months, despite my instincts about him, and he stole some money from Nica. The alternative could have been his homelessness. In the course of this year then, both decisions were made, and both caused one kind of suffering and prevented the other.
The way life works, if one is aware of consequences, this sort of decision bares its head all the time. I have no idea how to deal with it better.
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