“You’re ruining things for us you know,” my friend told me as I paid my worker and thanked him, reminding him I’d see him the next day. We still had work to do and I very much needed his help.
I was living alone in my beach hideaway at the time. And although I can do just about everything, there are things where I need help like carpentry, heavy lifting and cement work.
Rafa and I were making a wall with recycled glass bottles I’d collected: long elegant wine bottles,, stout and fat tonic water bottles that made a great foundation and some relatively square tequila bottles that provided support in the mid-section as we rose the wall higher. My liquor shopping had become as much about shape as content.
“What do you mean?” I asked my friend, puzzled.
“You’re ruining it, paying so much,” he said. “He’d work for way less.”
I laughed, asked him if he were serious and then said, “It’s barely enough to get by as it is.”
He shrugged and say, “Most get by with less. And they’ll all want more if you keep that up. You and the rest of the gringos.”
I decided not to engage, not to defend my ideals or my countrymen. Instead I opened a bottle of wine with a smile, poured us both an Italian glass full, handed him one and said, “Here’s to paying enough.” I paused, wondering if my philosophy might lose me another friend but decided to continue regardless. “If helping others have a better life is how I ‘ruin’ it, so be it,” I declared.
He sipped the mediocre wine and commented, “You Yogis.”