Chapter 16. The Power of Giving
It was late on a Saturday afternoon, and I was walking near the edge of a rough part of Des Moines, Iowa. I saw a young boy, about six years old, climbing out of a dumpster behind an apartment building. He was dressed in a dirty tank top and shorts and was barefooted. In his hand he held a wadded-up fast food bag. When the boy’s feet hit the ground, he ran around to the far side of the dumpster, opened up the bag, and pulled out a handful of fries, which he stuffed in his mouth as though he were starving. I have never in my life felt so compelled to help someone out, but I didn’t know what to do. I looked around and spied a McDonald’s about a block away, and so I walked over near the child and said hello to him. He looked scared and started to run away.
I told him loudly that I wanted to buy him some food. He stopped and looked back at me for a minute. I told him that I was going to go down to the McDonald’s down the street and buy him some food and that I would come back and leave it by the dumpster. He could come and get it if he wanted. I decided to do it this way because I figured the kid wouldn’t follow me there, and I also didn’t want to create the appearance that I was abducting him. He seemed to understand the arrangement, so I walked down to an ATM, withdrew $20, went to McDonald’s, bought about $15 worth of food (thinking he could perhaps share some with his mother or any siblings or friends he might have), and put the change from my twenty dollar bill in the bag—four ones and some coins.
I came back to the dumpster and the boy was gone—which I kind of expected. I put the bag on the ground by the dumpster, looked around, and walked away. I watched for a little while, but I never saw the boy come back. I ended up just leaving the food there in hopes that the boy would eventually come back and find it, but to this day I don’t know if he did or not. I like to think that he came back, found the bag, took it to his mother and his little sister, and they were able to at least get some calories in their system to sustain them for a little while. I walked away with this simple vision in my head, and that thought lifted my mood for the rest of the day—and for days afterward.
Did this gift help the world? I can’t tell, but I can certainly say that it helped me.
One central thread throughout this book has been the power of community. By participating in a community, we are doubly rewarded. First, we live out the ideal of utilitarianism, in which our actions bring about a positive change in the lives of many others. Second, our lives are improved by the utilitarian actions of the other participants in that community—their giving benefits us.
Leo Babauta, author of The Power of Less, sums up this idea nicely: “Every successful person knows that you become successful because of how much value you give to others. [...] By helping others, they are more inclined to help you in return.”
He goes on. “I think it’s interesting how we intuitively know these things, but somehow our ego gets in the way. Our self-importance makes us think that we need to receive to justify giving. This is the same part of you that seeks to be right instead of happy. Is it worth it? [...] [I]t’s a much more empowering position to be the one that gives first. Otherwise, who knows how long it will take the other person to initiate, if it even happens at all. To wait for others to give is like waiting for someone to give you what you want. [...] When you can give without expecting anything in return, you have mastered the art of living.”1
1 Leo Babauta, How Giving Changes Everything. http://zenhabits.net/2009/07/how-giving-changes-everything/. Retrieved September 24, 2009.
The golden rule is at work here, but it goes far, far beyond that.
Giving Is Part of Participating in a Community
The power of communities in the modern world is growing. Thus, by corollary, the power of giving is growing as well.
In our lives, we participate in a plethora of communities—the community we live in, the workplace, the professional community of our peers, our church, the organizations we belong to, our circle of friends, our city, our state, our nation, the world itself. Within each of those communities, the power of giving is in force.
Simply by giving of yourself first without expecting a thing in return, we implicitly build the communities that we’re participating in. Those communities become more powerful, as each person in those communities has more resources upon which to draw. Those resources open the doors to more opportunities for that community, some of which may be of value to you.
Our giving not only strengthens those who we give to, it strengthens us as well. Giving is an essential part of community participation.
When we give to the food bank in our town, we expect nothing in return for that gift. Yet, subtly, that gift strengthens the very community we live in. The food winds up on the table of a family that needs it, giving them strength in their moment of need and enabling them to contribute more in the workplace and in the classroom. They contribute more to the community through this renewed energy, and that contribution, in countless unforeseeable ways, finds its way back to you.
When we contribute documentation and information to our professional community, we expect nothing in return for that gift. Yet, again, the community is strengthened. Others read and offer helpful edits to that documentation. Others read that documentation and utilize it to solve their own problems. Yet others are inspired to contribute their own materials and opportunities to the community. The community thrives in countless indirect ways, growing in unforeseen directions because of your initial contribution.
When we help a friend, we bring them up from their low point. We give them solace and hope for the future. They’re more able to contribute to the network of people in their own life, many of whom you know and who are better off simply because the friend you helped is now in a better place.
When we contribute to a political or social cause, we give that cause more leverage. Their resources are able to spread their message and their assistance a little bit wider, reaching a few more people and perhaps changing their way of thinking or even their way of living. As we learned in 2000, it only takes a handful of votes to swing an election and, by extension, the entire direction of a nation. Giving to a cause we believe in increases the chances of such a swing.
All of this, and it feels good, too.
Doing It Different
Quite often, the idea of giving is directly attached to money. Groups and individuals constantly ask for financial support. Our friends and family ask us for loans. Our church passes around a collection plate. Giving often feels like it saps away from the resources we need to achieve our own goals.
Financial giving is vital, don’t give me wrong. Without financial giving, many organizations would not be able to survive and many of the most powerful forms of giving would go undone. Financial giving is a powerful part of human and spiritual life.
At the same time, most people overlook the many, many ways we all have to give to others every single day. These gifts foster community, building a stronger network that not only helps countless others around us, but also supports us in our time of need.
Here are four exceptional gifts you can give every day.
Give Your Attitude
Having a positive attitude simply warms the room. It lifts the attitude of those around you. It encourages people to step outside of their normal routines. It makes people sit up and want to participate.
You can start by simply encouraging others. Give positive feedback when people contribute to the community. Speak up when a positive voice is really needed. Act energetic and enthusiastic about the things you care about.
Your positive attitude can spur others on to actions beyond what you could ever provide to the community, and that is a truly powerful gift, indeed.
Give Your Talents and Knowledge
I flipped the power switch and the computer hummed to life. The problem had been simple after all—a faulty power supply.
“The computer’s all fixed!” I shouted into the next room.
I heard shuffling, then the elderly man came into the room just as the Windows logo flashed on the monitor. “Thank you!” he said. “What do I owe you for that?”
“Nothing. I’m just glad to help,” I said as I put on my jacket to leave. I shook his hand and left.
A few days later, the old man stopped by our house to visit my dad. In his hand, he had a small package for me. “You collect baseball cards, don’t you? I have a few of these lying around in the attic, and I thought you might enjoy them.”
Inside the box was a number of vintage baseball cards—manna from heaven for a baseball-loving young man.
“One good turn deserves another,” he said after seeing the obvious look of delight on my face. I’ve held those words close to me ever since.
June 1994
Every single one of us is a warehouse of information and skills, both useful and otherwise. Although we are sometimes tempted to preserve these things for ourselves, it is only when we share these attributes that they have value.
Contribute documentation online that relates to your area of expertise and thus to the professional or interest-based community you belong to. Help people by answering the questions that you can provide a useful answer for. Share your musical talents with a church. Teach others how to participate in an activity that you’re skilled at.
You have an abundance of talent and knowledge within you. Find ways to share that talent with those who need it and you’ll bolster a community that you’re a part of.
Give Your Time
Quite often, skill isn’t required so much as time is. There are many incredibly simple tasks that can greatly help a community to thrive—administrating message boards, filing paperwork, stuffing envelopes, manning the food bank, answering the phone, and so on.
Many such tasks can easily be multitasked. For example, it often just takes a moment or two several times a day to effectively administer an Internet message board, but that time helps keep a message board clean and usable for the other members of the community. You can stuff envelopes for a cause while kicked back on the couch watching a movie. Errands for an organization can often be intermingled with your own errands.
Such simple tasks are often just what’s needed to help a community to grow and thrive.
Give Your Connections
With the wide array of communities each one of us finds ourselves with a toehold in, each of us likely knows a substantial number of people who are doing interesting things in the world. You might have a sister-in-law who’s involved with writing grants for the National Science Foundation and a childhood friend who’s a successful architect, for example.
Those connections you have are themselves a valuable resource to be shared with others. Simply doing something as simple as calling in a favor to an old friend can often be transformative in the life of someone else. This gift, simply done on your part, can create a tremendous sea change not only in an individual life, but in an entire community. After all, a rising tide lifts all boats.
Five Ways to Get Started
Excited to observe the power of giving in your own life? Here are five simple ways to get started.
- Take a look at the needs of the communities you’re involved in. You’re a part of a wide array of communities, from familial communities and professional communities to geographical communities and political communities. What’s needed in these communities? What can you easily give to these communities that fulfills a need?
- Make giving a habit. Commit yourself to a regular diet of giving something of value to someone or to a community as a whole. Make it a daily thing. It can be as simple as serving as a moderator for a low-traffic email list or it can be as big as collecting cans every day for the local food pantry. Do something every day.
- Alternate between the communities you support. By diversifying your giving, you increase the likelihood that you’ll make personal connections in different communities, which themselves can be the source of powerful giving—as well as powerful opportunities for yourself.
- Give in a way that stretches you. Giving can often be a powerful way to improve yourself and discover where your own personal limits are. Offer to write a document describing something in detail that will require you to do research. Give your time and energy to a building project that will physically push you and teach you construction skills.
- Enjoy it. Giving of yourself in a way that makes others thrive feels good.