Rethink the Season of Giving
Next Thursday, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and other charities beyond the Usa will be fully staffed with smiling-faced, happy volunteers eagerly doling out food and other assistance to those whose demand is greatest. Families beyond the country volition come together in the spirit of giving, and will return home beaming with pride and contentment, knowing deep in their hearts that they have fabricated a difference. Information technology'due south the finest side of American civilization, celebrating our own thankfulness past trying to give the less fortunate something to be thankful nigh.
Next Fri, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and other charities across the Usa volition exist understaffed, undersupplied, and underfunded, their staff working tirelessly and selflessly to provide for the basic needs of their constituents. People will become hungry, uncared for, and unsheltered. And the volunteers of Thanksgiving Day volition beam with pride and contentment, knowing deep in their hearts that they take fabricated a departure.
I love the adjacent 6 weeks, the holiday season between at present and the start of the new yr. I'm a Jew, and an atheist one at that, just still: the Christmas season has a deep resonance for me. (Don't go me started on Hannukah – information technology'southward a 2d-string holiday trying desperately to be Christmas, a pleasant enough Jewish idea gussied upwards in Christian article of clothing.) Despite the consumerism and the mall crowds and the almanac vaguely anti-Semitic war on "Happy Holidays", I think the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas flavour actually brings out the best in people.
But I remember also that it leads u.s.a. off-target. In fact, I retrieve it's all too piece of cake to get so defenseless up in the skillful feelings of the season that we lose sight of the point: giving is non almost good feelings! The fact that our clemency is seasonal should be a source of shame, not pride. I'm not talking about donating money here – that'south a fine thing to practice, just information technology'due south on a whole other level. I'm talking about real, person-to-person giving, almost really reaching out and helping our swain human beings, about enriching others' lives without worrying about enriching our ain.
By all means, requite this holiday season. Volunteer, drop toys in the Toys for Tots bins, throw change in the Salvation Army Santa's kettle. Simply keep these points in heed, too:
1. People demand your help twelvemonth-round.
Two years ago, I wrote a post hither that suggested having your kids choice from their old toys things they desire to give to the less fortunate kids who won't have anything or Christmas. Turns out, I was incorrect near that. Non well-nigh the spirit of it, only about the timing. Equally Sophie wrote in the comments,
As someone who works in a homeless shelter, I tin tell you lot that agencies such every bit ours are FLOODED with donations in November and December. Last year plenty brand new toys/games/electronics were donated for our bureau to have given 20-25 gifts to EACH of our children under under 18. But homeless children exercise not need so many toys – for one thing, where on globe would they shop them? They do URGENTLY need warm clothes, shoes, and school supplies – best supplied in the form of Walmart souvenir cards, to requite their homeless parents the dignity of purchasing their ain gifts for their ain children.
Turns out, the toy drives your local organizations acquit out are pretty successful. In December. When May comes around, though, shelters accept little on hand to give out. Sick kids on hospitals, children in battered women'southward shelters who have fled their homes in the middle of the night, and others might like a toy or two, simply nobody's donating in the heart of the yr – and most not-profits can't afford to shop their December compensation year-round.
The same goes for other forms of volunteering – in that location are homeless, disabled, sick, poor, and otherwise hurting people who need help year-round. Maybe your flavour of giving could exist Labor Mean solar day, Memorial Day, Arbor Day, May Day, or simply Some Random Day, when your aid is really needed.
2. The recipients of charity are people with feelings, value, and nobility.
When I was in higher, I was the banana manager of a thrift shop in San Diego. One of my duties was to take donations at the rear of the shop. I tin can't tell you how many times people pulled up, popped their trunk, and proceeded to basically clean their trunks into our donation bins. Torn clothes, oily rags, one-half-bottles of motor oil, torn magazines, and other refuse were common "donations", none of which we could utilise or even accept – it had to go straight into the dumpster. Just here's the thing: if I objected that I could not accept their donations (seriously, a lot of that stuff is actually considered toxic waste under the law and had no concern even being on the premises!) I was berated – these people, run into, had given out of the goodness of their hearts these wondrous gifts, and who was I to advise that the poor were too skillful for their gifts?
This is backhanded charity – it's similar stabbing someone and expecting them to thank you for the knife. Poor people don't need the dregs of your life, whether in the form of your textile cast-offs or your fourth dimension, emotion, and advice. Being poor means lacking resource, non defective humanity – if y'all can't connect with the people you aim to serve, as people, then nobody is the better for your alleged charity.
three. Consider the souvenir of autonomy.
Detect Sophie'south communication above about giving gift cards and allowing poor people the dignity to purchase the things they need. One of the resources most lacking for impoverished people is autonomy. The greatest hardship of poverty is the way it limits you – oftentimes in ways that create greater poverty, like the fashion stores in poor neighborhoods often charge college prices than stores in improve-off neighborhood, considering the poor often lack the transportation options to brand meaningful choices near where they shop.
Think about the way yous volunteer of give charity – is in that location a fashion you could increment people's abilities to make their ain choices, to follow their ain paths, to develop their own abilities? If not, maybe you should call up about choosing a different grade of assistance.
4. Only connect.
Remember that charity is about people, not bug. You may take plenty of ideas about why people are in whatever prepare they're in, and you may experience yous know what's best for them even when they don't. But frankly, you don't. If yous're in a position to help, you most probable have no idea what the people you lot're helping are going through. Fifty-fifty if yous were yourself in one case in their position, what worked for you might not work for others – don't forget how big a role luck and circumstances can play.
Also oft, people in a position to help hold themselves apart from the people they hope to assist. And no wonder – for the in one case-a-year volunteer, at that place is lilliputian fourth dimension to become to know anyone, allow alone really understand what their lives are like. If you can, make a long-term commitment and open yourself up to the lives of the people your charity is aimed at. Become to know people face-to-face, as friends and colleagues and equals.
five. Forget you.
Last but most of import, call back, it'south not about you. Yes, it feels good to requite, and there'south no point in feeling guilty virtually that, but don't do it because it makes yous feel good, or because you earn points towards a merit badge or college credit, or because it'south office of your organization's charter, or for whatever other mode that charity benefits yous. Do it because you must, considering existence a giving person is right.
The Muslims have the better of it on this one: giving is non simply a mitzvah (the fulfilling of a Biblical commandment in the Jewish faith) or a Good Piece of work, it's one of the Five Pillars of Islam, the central defining features of Muslim identity. It's not simply something Muslims do, but something they are.
Nosotros can all larn from that. Find a manner to give not just of your wealth – and don't allow the lack of wealth go along you from giving – just of your talents, skills, knowledge, and self. Make giving part of who you lot are, not just a affair you do.
And this year, instead of giving during the season of giving and and then returning to your "normal life" when you pack away the tree and lights, permit the holidays be a starting indicate to a life of yr-round giving.
Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/rethink-the-season-of-giving.html
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