Every so often someone says, sings or writes something that almost perfectly expresses a personal thought, feeling or philosophy.

Yesterday I found one of those rare gems of meaning deep within a site dedicated to zodiac forecasts. The forecast for my sign, Aquarius, included this gem:

"To a tailor, they are bodies, waiting to be clothed. To a hairdresser, they are heads waiting to be trimmed. But what are people? Customers? Clients? Consumers? Or sensitive, intelligent, beautiful human beings who are worth far more than to be treated as walking wallets."
Jonathan Cainer

The walking wallet concept describes what I see around me, day after day, with rare exception. People treat each other as walking wallets almost exclusively where we live. Every social contact I have these days, with the exception of my family and friends, requires an expenditure of money. Try living without it for a while and you will see what I mean. Even volunteer work requires cash for transportation to and from. Most pleas for support from charitable organizations are pleas for cash. If you really care, you will send cash.

For me this "walking wallet" concept is linked to the efforts to help the victims in Haiti. Most of us feel compassion and concern for the people of Haiti, some of us have always felt compassion and concern for people living in third world economies.

How to help? That is a tough one, because we aren't there. We can't load blankets and food into our cars and drive down the road to offer assistance. We can't listen to and honour the stories that people need to tell. We can't mind the children, assist with meals and burials.

We must engage a "middleman" to take currency from us and convert it into human compassion. This is an inherently flawed system. Unfortunately it is the only system available to the majority of humans on planet earth, so for most of us this is how we have to help.

They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Now the people of Haiti are paying the pound of cure, because they/we failed to perceive that an ounce of prevention was needed.

We, as a species, have always displayed this social myopia. We do not learn from history, because events like natural disasters, in New Orleans and Haiti for example, and situations like hunger and want, still flourish around the planet.

Every crisis is an opportunity to make money, and it is no secret that somebody does make money (or attain power and influence) in the process of restoring the social order when disasters strike.

Not every human on planet earth regards others primarily as "walking wallets". They know who they are. You won't find them accepting accolades in the news media, or making huge public gestures of compassion and caring. You will find them quietly taking action, where and when they can. They don't need your cash, and they would appreciate a helping hand.