It has been over two years that I have been writing monthly newsletters and now I even have a blog. I worried when I started that I wouldn't have enough to say. Fortunately, or rather unfortunately, I, like the rest of us, don't learn from our pasts, notice obvious patterns, or change our behaviors let alone our expectations. Hello, job security!

Reflections from the Road: Generosity

Often when the concept of generosity or being generous comes up there is a connection to money. I hear "a generous donation" when I turn my attention to being generous. I want to focus on a kind of generosity that doesn't have anything to do with money because I think money can be an excuse as much as it can be a barrier. Bill Gates struggled for years on where to give. He knew that others would evaluate his "generosity" and he wanted to do "it" right. He worried about their approval. Similar to "did I tip enough?" but on a much larger scale. He didn't give for years and years after it was very well known that he was and is one of the richest men alive. Interestingly, others began to judge him for not giving. There is a lot of pressure there to give and to give right. Most of us, well realistically, those of us outside of the top 1% income bracket (recent data shows that the top 1% is equal to the bottom 93 million people — yes 93,000,000 — so when I say us I mean the 93 million of us) may not feel that we have enough to give, so financial donations don't seem possible. Personally, I try to budget in donations by setting a cap on yearly financial donations and I also give a percentage of my business's profits to a few organizations that I believe in.

This isn't Generosity. This is giving. There is a difference.

I am not sure where this quote comes from, but "Give until it doesn't hurt anymore," is a saying I grew up with. I think there are some financial interpretations that could go with this phrasing, but it gets to something else — something deeper. Before one arrives at generosity — there is pain. This pain must be overcome. I have to do it for some other reason — not for validation, self deprecation, or to end my suffering. I must strive to be generous because it is what I ought to do.

What we ought to do, how we ought to act, isn't about charity, donations, time, names on bricks, or even recognition etched into gold plates.

I don't remember much from my college experience, at least not in the classroom, but I have one strong memory from a Social Theory course. A sociologist, George Homans, stated, "there is no selfless act." I just conducted a google search for this and didn't come up with anything specific — it is possible that I am misremembering — however, my point is still alive today. When I heard this statement (whether it happened or not), I was convinced that it wasn't true. I remember being almost physically struck, I think I even rested my chair back onto its four legs! This couldn't be! So, since that day back in the 1990's, I have consistently been searching for a truly selfless act. Much to my dismay, I have yet to find one. Almost everything any of us do has some kind of response, reaction, etc., that benefits our self and our Self.

I think the concept of generosity is the link here. Giving of ourselves and/or our resources because it is the the right thing to do may be as rewarding as it is beneficial to another. Giving more than you take because you want to looks just like apathy, laziness, stupidity, ignorance, and may be received in a positive or negative way. Generosity comes out of your actions, in-actions, thoughts, and thoughtlessness.

It is example time — and this is a particularly fun example.

My husband and I were in the car stopped at a red light several cars back from the intersection. Where we live there is a very high level of unemployment, and it is incredibly isolated, with a very high presence of transients as well as pedestrians. (I should mention too, just in case a "local" reads this, where we live it is also stunningly beautiful, home grown, quaint, and as geographically isolated as those of us who choose to live here want to be). Anyway, we are in the car stopped at a light.

There are two men walking along the sidewalk at a fast pace — one of the men is holding a pack of cigarettes in a manner that with each stride a cigarette is falling out. We look up the sidewalk, and sure enough there is a trail of new cigarettes. My husband rolls down the window to let the guy know he is dropping his cigarettes. The two men stop, look behind them, shrug their shoulders and keep walking. I quit smoking 8 years ago and cigarettes were pretty pricey back then — I have no idea what a pack costs now — so I immediately started to judge this man for laziness, maybe he was on drugs or something, maybe he likes to litter, who knows. Just then, as the light changed and we began to roll forward with traffic, a woman, who I would guess was homeless, was smiling ear to ear walking along on the sidewalk. Every once in awhile, she would bend down, and then keep walking. As we got closer to her, we realized that the cigarette fairy had come along with great generosity and was making this woman's day! Every three feet or so — another present! The woman lit up, with joy, and began to smoke.

Generosity is about the man accidentally donating the better part of his pack of smokes to a stranger. Maybe it was generous of us, to alert him of the trail he was leaving. The woman was picking up litter that, one might foresee, being so close to the ocean, would or could end up in the water. Generosity is the joy the woman felt. The laughter my husband and I shared in her "being in the right place at the right time." Generosity is not knowing how or when you might have a positive impact on someone else and doing it anyway.

If we each took responsibility to Do Good (Thank you, Delta Gamma!), share, listen, be present, quiet our insecurities, postpone our need for validation, we could and would change the world. That is the power of Generosity.

"Let no one ever come to you... without leaving happier..."
Mother Teresa

Social Justice Quotations That Keep Me Going:

"I happen to think apologies are pretty empty absent substantive reparations and recompense – I think that perhaps before we focus so much on apologies, we could simply say "thank you" to people of color. Thank you to blacks for among other things, building the country's economy. Thank you to Latinos for, among other things, showing us how to mine gold so that we could become a wealthier nation. Thank you to native peoples for, among other things, showing us how to farm and harvest crops so we wouldn't starve. Thank you to Asians for, among other things, building the railroads without which the transcontinental economy would never have developed as it did. And thank you to all people of color for pointing the way when it comes to resistance. Than you for refusing to die. People of color owe us nothing, be we owe them at least that much."
Tim Wise, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son