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A university student in Austin, Texas named Amanda left her car unlocked one night. The next morning, she noticed the driver’s seat had been pushed back and reclined. It had rained a lot that night and someone had taken refuge from the rain in her car. Rather than locking it, she purposefully left her car unlocked for the rest of her university degree. As a result, for almost two years that person could sleep there and stay dry on rainy nights. Over that time, that person would leave little gifts of appreciation in the car for her – a flower from a nearby tree or a small plastic ring. Amanda reflected: “All they needed was a little bit of shelter and if I could provide that in a really small way, then…why not?” (To listen to the full story, check out the Criminal podcast, Episode 81: Unexpected Guests starting at 24:22.)
A 6 foot 5 inch man being very aggressive on the train in Vancouver towards other passengers. His aggression escalated and he started pushing people. Everyone on the bus was scared. A 70-year old woman reached out to hold his hand and gripped it firmly until he calmed down. The man sat on the floor next to her for about 20 minutes holding that woman’s hand. While he sat and held her hand, he cried. When he reached his top, the man said: “Thanks Grandma” and left the train. Afterwards, the woman said: “I’m a mother and he needed someone to touch.” She admitted that she felt scared as well, but she said, with tears in her eyes: “For me, it was more important that he didn’t feel alone.”
I love these stories. They are such important reminders of the give and take of generosity. Generosity calls upon people to act in a way that lifts others up. It also calls upon those receiving the gift of generosity to accept it openly and with grace.
These women are everyday heroes – as they live their lives, they are choosing to act with generosity when they see a person in need. Importantly, both women saw and felt the humanity of the person they were generous to. And both Amanda and that woman on the train gave something up of their own comfort to provide comfort to a person they didn’t even know.
Generosity can come in many forms – it can involve donating money to charity, but it can also take many other forms as the above stories illustrate. Making a decision to be generous can mean sharing space with those in need, showing an empathetic and compassionate response to those who are hurting, or giving your time to an important and worthy cause to help others.
Generosity is a learned skill. It takes discipline to cultivate and practicing generosity requires giving up some personal comfort (remove- to practice). So as parents, we need to model generosity for our children. As managers, we need to model it for our staff. And as citizens, we need to elect leaders who value and demonstrate generosity.
In each of these roles, we need to emphasize the importance of generosity. We need to model a deep sense of caring for other people’s humanity. We need to consider the ways in which we can give up our own comfort to support others in need. And most importantly, we need to practice generosity with a spirit of humility rather than through a lens of pity.
A generous mindset is not just needed at the holidays but at all times throughout the year. A generous mindset involves continuous commitment to support and serve others. It could involve pledging monthly donations to charities rather than one-time gifts, modeling generosity whenever we see that homeless person on the street, and continually rethinking what comforts we are willing to give up to help others.
For those of us who are on the receiving end of generosity, there are also opportunities to grow. We can work on being able to accept people’s generosity with grace and humility. We can graciously accept, and acknowledge with gratitude, our loved one’s offer to take over doing the dishes because we have indeed had a long, hard day. We can gracefully accept our friend’s offer to pay for lunch. And we can say thank you to those who give or lend us money when we need it.
So let’s think about how we can embrace a mindset of generosity in our everyday lives. Let’s consider the humanity of everyone around us and embrace their struggles as our own. And let’s learn to model and practice the skill of generosity in our daily lives because the world will be better for it.
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Some people have difficulty seeing the difference between gracefully accepting and expecting generosity. There seems to be a fine line separating the two. The generous person needs to recognize this can be so and not allow it to colour their generous spirit! So easy to give up when you encounter it! Hurray for the folk that hang on to their generosity!!
Elsie – thanks for adding this important nuance to the conversation about generosity. There was another example of a Dad and two sons who had chopped truckloads of wood to give to people who needed it to heat their homes over the winter (article link here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2018/12/21/father-his-sons-cut-wood-fill-trucks-then-they-brought-it-homes-that-needed-heat/) and they found that while most people were very thankful, others were a mad at the world and they understood. The Dad, Shane McDaniel said: “Giving is the reward — it has nothing to do with how well it’s received, but it’s about how much it’s needed.” I thought of including this but the article was getting long so I am really happy that you brought up this important idea: that not everyone is ready to accept generosity gracefully and that a cool reception to a generous gift shouldn’t dissuade further acts of generosity. Thanks for highlighting this important point.