There’s something wrong with my heart, I think, besides those mysterious panicky twinges that come and go like a karma chameleon. I refer to a heavy, regretful pain of the sort that arises when I learn of secret American plans to nuke Iran or when people don’t believe I’m close, personal friends with Frenzy Lohan, Roller Rink Habitué.

There is a homeless man who has been hanging out at my business for months. Early in his ensconcement, I asked my employees for their thoughts on what, if anything, should be done about this. While I have nothing against the homeless, and indeed have been feeding and shuttling them around town for years, there is something to be said for maintaining control over an interaction where the other person is actively taking advantage of your good nature. My employees’ natures being somewhat gooder and less jaded than my own, they decided that the most we should do is universally enforce a set of standards, such as “no sleeping” or “no disturbing others in any way,” upon all of our customers. At the time, I agreed with (and even architected the language of) this approach. Discriminating against or dehumanizing any person or group of people is the worst anathema to me, and the ideal situation would be to craft an official policy of my business in line with my lifetime of trying to help others.

Only, of course, our friend casually ignored every request. When startled from sleep or told not to consume stacks of outside food at our tables, he would say, “OK,” leave, and return the next day and do the precise same thing. I had hoped that, once the cold weather broke, the problem would solve itself, and he would move on, but this did not happen in quite the way I envisioned. He moved on, certainly: from a table in the back of the dining area to the comfortable couch we put in the front of the dining area. Recently, two different people told me that the first thing they noticed upon entering my business for the first time was a homeless man sleeping on that couch. The next day, my assistant manager asked my permission to throw him out for good: the homeless man had been clipping his fingernails (I hope they were his fingernails) and leaving the remnants scattered about. This must have been shortly after his snoring disturbed everyone in the vicinity.

“Do it,” I said.

I feel bad, though. My heart aches, from knowing what I’ve done and not knowing the results of it. Have I generated bad karma for myself or my business? Will I go to hell for being less kind than I should have to someone in need? Of course, I’m not a Hindu or a Christian, but I think these questions somehow weigh on me more than they would on real Hindus or Christians.

More, though, I worry about the homeless man. Where will he go? How will he survive? Will someone else help him?

I’m not stupid. I know that many homeless people have developed a certain way they engage the world to survive that involves taking advantage of people. I know I have fallen for some of these schemes in the past, and I probably will again in the future, mostly because I don’t care if someone is going to buy a cup of coffee or a bottle of booze with the money I buy him. It’s not mine to dictate that choice . . . I will accumulate whatever good comes from helping someone no matter what the other person does with that help. But I’ll also accumulate the bad. Once, for example, a person who came to my door asking for money broke in the window the next day while I was at work.

I’ll also accumulate the bad that results from not helping someone, I suppose. As I’m exposed to more and more people in the context of my new business, this will undoubtedly be a larger and larger group.

I just hope there’s some way to accumulate some good, as well.