Give a Little Bit

A few reflections for the impending dreaded upcoming 2008 holiday season…

We’ve been working on the next issue of Block Club Magazine, our Giving Issue.  We’re discussing the various ways you can donate your time, your unused belongings and your other miscellaneous energy to the hundreds thousands of local charities and organizations that need it.  Many of the groups and activities we mention are familiar to most of you—helping at a soup kitchen, donating old sweaters to a shelter, collecting cans of soup and food, etc.—but others are things that you probably didn’t even know existed, groups you might not have ever considered being available for their regular constituents.  (For instance, did you know you can sign up to read newspapers, magazines and other periodicals to the blind over a dedicated radio station?  How cool is that?)

Last night I interviewed a spectacular young lady named Laura, whose Web site has taken the globe by storm (yes the globe, as in Planet Earth).  I posted about her site a couple weeks back, and you’ll obviously read much more about her in the next issue but I had such a nice time with Laura and her mom, Angela.  They shared with me Laura’s desire to help people in her community simply because they need it.  She gives because it makes her feel good—“tingly” was the exact word, which she demonstrated by shaking her arms a little—and because it should be done.  She’s proof positive that it doesn’t take a lot to do a lot for someone else.  And it doesn’t have to all be about money or a donation as such.  It doesn’t even have to be for a charitable organization (that’s the goal, but there are other things fall under the “good deed” category).  You can make dinner for a friend.  You can shovel rake an older neighbor’s driveway yard.  You can do the dishes for your mom (that’s straight from Laura’s mouth).  You can even just give someone a hug, especially someone who looks like or says they they need one.

The goal is not to raise $100,000,000 by selling lemonade.  The goal is to give something you have to offer, be it money, goods, time, friendship or whatever it is you can offer, and benefit someone else NOT because you want to get attention or thanks for it, but because it makes someone else feel good.  That will make you feel good in return.  It’s true that you can’t really give selflessly without benefiting yourself.  There was a “Friends” episode (don’t hate me for just saying those words) in which Earth mother, Pheobe Buffay, declared you cannot give without also feeling good yourself; that it is impossible to give selflessly.

I would venture to say that while you can certainly give more than you get, you also can’t help but to feel lifted by your gift.  And that’s something you can’t put a bow on.

Photo courtesy this guy.

Posted by on 10/14 at 03:02 PM