Generosity

Imagine for a minute that someone stuck a lottery ticket in your Christmas stocking and you won. You won big: $30 million--after taxes.

And you decide to give it all away.

"I must be nuts," you think. "No one in their right mind would do that."

Actually, there are perfectly sane people who've done the equivalent. One of my favorites is a guy named Percy Ross. The son of an immigrant junk dealer, Ross grew up to be an entrepreneur who, after a couple of business failures, sold one of his successful ventures for $8 million.

After dividing that money up four ways--a share for him, one for his wife, and one each for his two sons--Ross invested his. And his share grew into a vast fortune that he decided he would give away to people who really, truly needed it.

Ross is in his 80s now, and he's given away that entire fortune. He started in 1977 by giving $50,000 to help 50 Vietnamese refugees make a new home in America. Then he threw a huge party for 1,050 poor children of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He gave each a bicycle--something he wanted as a child but his family could not afford. After the thrill of that Christmas party, he started a newspaper column called "Thanks a Million." Readers would write in and ask for money. If they asked the right way, Ross would send it.

Ross doesn't reveal how much he actually gave away over the years, but many estimate it to be in the $30-million range.

"I never tell anybody," he says. "It's not a question of how much one gives. Am I a better person if I gave away $2 million than if I gave $1 million?"

And that's not all. "If I had twice as much," he says, "I still would have given it all away. For every person I helped, there were 400 to 500 I couldn't help."

Percy Ross is the kind of person a lot of us would like to be.

I've got something interesting to tell you: No matter how bad the world seems at times, the human race has done a pretty good job of creating a Percy Ross-style system of values.

It's what Connecticut College president Claire Gaudiani calls "the wisdom tradition." By that, she means that human beings have long recognized the value and importance of generosity--even generosity toward those who are from different backgrounds than we are.

"I suspect that we, as a species, are hardwired to be generous--that this is a survival mechanism of our species," she says.

Gaudiani is writing a book on the topic. In her research, she has found countless stories from over the ages that reveal the role compassion and charity play in the human tradition. What she has learned is that compassion and charity bind us together; they create a family out of strangers, a bond that sustains the race.

One of the most famous is the story of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan comes across a man who has been robbed and beaten, and even though the man's religion and ethnicity are different than his--major barriers, even today--the Good Samaritan reaches out to help that man because he recognizes what they have in common is their humanity.

There are even older instances than this 2,000-year-old story, though.

Jewish philosopher and physician Maimonides describes eight stages of tzedakah, or generosity. (The word tzedakah comes from the Hebrew word for "righteousness," "justice," or "fairness": That's how important charity is to the Jewish tradition.)

The first and lowest form of tzedakah is giving as little as possible, as infrequently as possible, and with as little respect toward the recipient as possible, Gaudiani says. Given that, you might expect the highest form of charity would be giving as much money as frequently as possible.

But this isn't what Maimonides had in mind. Rather, he meant for us to imagine that some day, the person in need will be the only person able to save your family. And unless you give to that person today, your family will later perish. In this way, Gaudiani says, the giver and the recipient are partners. (If you've ever read Charlotte's Web by E. B. White, this is the kind of giving relationship that exists between the spider and the pig.)

Islam also holds charity in high regard. In the sacred text of Islam, the Qur'an, there are five pillar concepts, Gaudiani says. Charity is the second pillar--second only to praising God.

The prophet Muhammad makes an intriguing promise to believers: "You will sustain and grow your wealth at the rate at which you give it away."

But we don't have to think of philanthropy as merely the act of giving away money. The word comes from philos and anthropos, the Greek words for "love" and "man." The broader meaning of philanthropy, then, is love for our fellow human beings. In many cultures this broader idea is communicated as a call for individuals to take responsibility for the welfare of their community.

The ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius, for example, believed people were only whole if they built four key types of bonds: those to family, the community, the nation, and the universe. Confucius advised that when you make a decision or take an action, you should consider its impact on each of those four levels, Gaudiani says.

The theme of community carries over into the Yoruba faith of Nigeria, in which the god Ogun calls all people to care for one another. Interestingly enough, Gaudiani points out, Ogun called for the people in need to be part of the solution for others in even deeper need.

The point is that everyone has something to give. Even if you never have a million dollars to give away, there are a million ways you can help other people. It takes a hard goal, a commitment, and a little of the Percy Ross spirit. If his story is any example, it's a great way to live a life with no regrets.

When he finished giving away all of his money, Ross wrote a little thank you to his supporters: "I'll continue to seek financial opportunities in our capitalistic society. In other words, I need to get a job. And, if by chance I can make another pile of money, I'll be back giving it away."

“The kids are proud!” my husband, Brian, commented, “I told them where you were.”  We were vacationing in the Caribbean, and I had been engaged in one of my quirky travel pastimes—buying children’s books and dropping them at a local library. Brian looked pleased with himself, our daughters hugged me, and I squirmed at having been outed.   

I was raised on a Bible story in which Jesus is watching Pharisees loudly drop coins into a tithe box at the temple door. Then a poor widow comes along and discretely puts in a mite—a small coin of little value.  Jesus says that the widow has given more than any of them, because she gave what little she had while they gave out of their surplus.  He also says that the Pharisees will get no reward in heaven; their reward is the attention that they have sought and received.   I’m no longer worried about gaining or losing rewards in heaven.  But the sense has stuck that public eyes somehow diminish a gift, even if those “public eyes” belong to two small girls. 

For several reasons, parents who were raised on similar stories need to push past the discomfort of giving in front of their kids.  New research from the University of British Columbia reports that giving makes people happier. In fact, how we spend our money, whether we use it to help others has more effect on happiness than the total in the bank.  Other kinds of giving matter, too:  time, for example, or knowledge.  The important thing is that children learn giving skills.    

One time, I sat in my psychology office with a high schooler who had just returned from a Habitat for Humanity trip in Peru.  He poured out an exuberant mix of images and ideas. “Where did you get this from?!” I asked him, surprised by his intensity.  “How did this stuff come to be a part of who you are?”  “From my mother,” he answered immediately

I realized there was a part of his family experience that I didn’t know.  He was in my office because his parents had gone through a difficult divorce and each family member was, in his or her own way, struggling.  We had been focused on declining grades, behavior problems and conflicts.  Pain makes us self absorbed, and he and his sister and parents hadn’t been very focused on the well-being of the world in the months since they had first come in to see me.  It was all they could do to muddle their way through the emotional upheaval.

“From your mother,” I repeated.  “How so?”  “Oh,” he responded, “She used to take us to serve dinners for homeless people, and she raised money for the animal shelter, and we were involved in our neighborhood clean-up. . . .”   By the time he finished describing the many ways that his mother had involved him in her service and giving, I had learned an important lesson.  Giving was second nature for him, like brushing his teeth.  It was part of his normal equilibrium. As soon as he began emerging from the divorce process, it was there waiting, pulling him back into a healthier, happier part of himself.   

 If we want our children to make their beds, we show them how it’s done, we coach them through it, and we nudge them along.  If we want them to be readers, we read to them; we tell them it is important; we read together so that reading becomes part of our bond.  If we want them to be kind to animals, we teach them how to pick up a cat and we remind them what it feels like for an unfed pet to be hungry.  We talk to animals in peculiar ways, pet them, and invite the children to join us.  In all of these we model, explain, and encourage the desired habits and then provide opportunities for supervised practice. But if we want them to be civic minded or charitable, we expect them to pick it up by osmosis.

Let me tell you what happened as a result of my husband exposing my library adventure.  Not long afterward, back home, our then six-year-old picked up a book about manatees.  She has always been fascinated with marine mammals.  In fact, at one point her stated goal in life was to become an Orca whale.  This time, she came down stairs crying, saying, “Mommy, I want to send money to the manatees.  I don’t want them to be extinct.” 

She painstakingly dictated a letter to her aunt in Florida, asking about how to help manatees.  She drew pictures of manatees being hit by boats, with a big circle and slash around them.   And she set about raising money by pulling weeds, picking up messes, and making a one-box garage sale in which she sold—this is the bonus part—her only Barbie.

When she was still at it two months later, I helped her to sell drinks and brownies at a local parade.  By then she had involved our next door neighbor girl and her little sister.  A friend of ours dropped by, and as he was leaving, he drew five dollars out of his pocket.  “This is for Brynnie’s manatee fund,” he said.  “Our boys pulled weeds in our back yard because they wanted to contribute.”  

Now, I’ve never really focused before on helping manatees, but I’ll confess, I love it.  I get that in-love-with-my-kid feeling whenever I think of her quest.  “She’s becoming a regular mooch,” my husband said when he came home from work to find an elaborately decorated ‘Change for Manatees’ box on top of our drier.  “No,” I reminded him.  “It’s not mooching, it’s fundraising.”  My husband hates begging favors as much as I hate the public eye.  But if we both have to squirm a bit so that the girls can grow their helping instinct into a giving habit, so be it.