About Giving

“I like to give until it feels good.”

I read that quote from a nonprofit volunteer and thought, “Huh.” Is that kind of philanthropy really giving – or is it simply scratching an ego-itch?

Why do we give money to the needy? Why do we give volunteer time to charities? Why do we help elderly people carry heavy packages … or whatever else it is we do out of the alleged kindness of our hearts?

Philanthropy. Charity. Both words grow from the same linguistic root: the idea of unselfish love towards other humans. It is the virtue that is the foundation of all others, at least according to St. Thomas Aquinas. But if I’m doing something because it feels good… what’s love got to do with it? If I’m doing it because it makes me look like a virtuous person – at least in my own eyes, if not in the opinion of others – is it a virtue at all?

I have loved a lot of people, not always completely unselfishly. But I can tell you this – real love requires the willingness to do something that is 100% for the other person and 0% for my own benefit. And, frankly, the only way to know whether that willingness is the real thing is to do the unselfish thing I claim I am willing to do.

Let’s do that this season… do one thing that is 100% for someone else’s benefit. I suspect we will find it impossible, because even when we are cold and tired and covered in other people’s unappreciative nastiness, we do find ourselves on the receiving end of our very own benefit. Somehow, we realize we are connecting with something deeper than ourselves.

When we don’t have that connection, then we discover that we are simply incapable of loving unselfishly, because this kind of love-philanthropy-charity doesn’t come from within ourselves. It originates in a much grander reality than what our physical eyes and ears can capture. But, somehow, our hearts know.

During this holiday season, whatever holiday it is we observe, may we each connect with that which flows out of us as selfless love. At least once.

"Mommy, look!!"

I heard a very young voice speak that phrase yesterday and was struck by how some of us never really outgrow the impulse to share things with our parents, hoping they will be just as thrilled as we feel. My parents have now been gone for a few years, but whenever something new and good happens in my professional or personal life, I still start to reach for the phone to call them.

And then I started hoping that each of my kids will feel that way too as they continue their journeys through adulthood. I don’t need to be the first phone call they make, but I hope I’m the kind of mother and mentor that rewards those calls with encouragement and shared excitement. That may seem like stating the obvious – doesn’t every parent react that way? Uh… no.

As I grew older, there seemed to be more areas of my life that my parents simply did not “get.” Even if I had good news, I couldn’t share it with them because, at best, they would look confused. At worst, they would question why I was even involved in the activity in the first place. And their questioning had less to do with genuine curiosity than with poorly-veiled criticism about those things that are so important to me. Volunteerism comes to mind… philanthropy…. and anything connected with faith. My mom had religion, my dad had no faith until his final years, and my version of faith was simply a foreign concept which they did not try to understand.

I never really got used to that. I accepted that my extrovert mother would never understand my introvertedness. Why, yes, I do realize that’s not a word. At least it wasn’t before now. :) And I knew neither of them saw the fun in playing with words – or teddy bears. That was okay. Not being able to talk to them about my most important values was not okay. I sometimes feel that way with my adult kids, but I still invite them to enter my world now and then. I guess I'm either more courageous or less inhibited than I used to be; I stopped offering my parents those tentative, shy invitations long before I hit my thirties.

I was sure they would be excited when I announced my plans to go to graduate school. After all, education was just about their highest value. My mom was pleased, mostly because she had her own ideas of what I would do with the degree. My dad was more cautious. He shocked me by telling me it was not a good idea for a wife to be more educated than her husband. I had never heard him speak a single sexist word before! He meant well, but this was a traumatic moment for me – shaking the foundation of my understanding of who my father was.

I suppose parents and adult children will rarely, if ever, share identical sets of values. To be able to encourage each other even in the places where our journeys diverge: that is love. And it is grace. I guess this ability is one of the things I would like to be remembered for – by my kids, my friends, my siblings, my husband, my colleagues, my clients, my students…. Please keep inviting me into your world, even if my response is sometimes less than what you had hoped for.

Reasons, Purpose & Power

“There is a reason for everything.” Really? It seems that every year I hear more voices added to that chorus, find more occasions where a tragedy is explained, even minimized, by people saying it happened “for a reason.” Well, that’s one philosophy, and I’m not sure I agree. Please bear with me as I think about this with my fingers on the keyboard…

What I disagree with is the idea that the tragedy in question was fore-ordained, was purposefully part of some divine plan…. People use the word “reason” to mean “purpose”, and imply that the purpose preceded the event. Hmmm. The only alternative they can imagine – it seems – is that the event is insignificant, no matter how tragic and painful. That’s just bad thinking, at least in my book.

Why? Because purpose does not always come first. Take the story of Candy Lightner, who founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in 1980 after her daughter was killed by a repeat drunk driver. Why? Because that is what had to happen in order for her to start an organization whose efforts have helped cut drunk driving fatalities in half? No!!!! It happened because some idiot got drunk and once again got behind the wheel. Period. That’s the dark side of life – things happen because human beings are by nature stupid, irresponsible, selfish, and short-sighted. Does that sound harsh? Well, it is. I suspect seeing your daughter’s mangled body in the morgue is pretty harsh too – but it’s the truth.

But the dark side is not the only side. Human beings can also be courageous, visionary, selfless, and heroic. And when a tragedy happens, we can THEN find a purpose. We can say, “because this happened to me, I now have the sensitivity/knowledge/ability to help others, and I must.” That’s what Lightner and many others have done. They purposefully found a purpose for their tragedies – but I don't believe that is the “reason” that those things happened in the first place. Instead of asking “why did this happen?” which does not always have a useful answer, they asked “what can I do now to make things better?” By doing so, they took their power back, they said, in effect, “This tragedy will not destroy me – it will propel me to save others.” Loss is no less meaningful, and no less powerful, because it didn’t happen as part of some divine plan. But it can be redeemed.

What are we waiting for?

"What are you waiting for? You're faster than this. Don't think you are, know you are. Come on. Stop trying to hit me and hit me." -- Morpheus in the Matrix

I’ve been struggling lately with a situation that is so common it may be reaching epidemic status: healthy, talented people who fail to grow up. I don’t get it. As Morpheus would say, they're faster than this. Many people are independent adults by the time they reach their twentieth birthdays; there’s nothing particularly impressive about that. But the older I get, the more otherwise really cool folks I come across who are in their twenties, thirties, even fifties and sixties, and yet still need help taking care of their own basic needs. Sometimes I hear these very people complain about not having a spouse or children. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that someone who hasn’t figured out how to keep a roof over their heads or how to maintain more than casual relationships probably shouldn't be wishing for their very own dependent.

But it’s not those unfulfillable fantasies that perplex me, it’s the very fact that someone would want to stay so stuck for so long. Pediatricians have a term for kids that stop growing, they call it failure to thrive. So many adults I have met have failed to thrive… they survive day to day and year to year but that’s all they are doing: surviving. Well, surviving and complaining, and wishing and sighing and staying stuck.

What to do? Children who fail to thrive sometimes have to literally be taught how to eat, because they may not have developed the muscles used in chewing and swallowing. I guess we need to do something similar when working with adults who have failed to thrive, failed to grow up. Mind you, most of them eat food just fine, it is probably the feeding of their mind and the exercising of their character that needs help. So I’ve developed the following handy checklist you can use if you are either (gasp!) identifying with my description or you love someone who fits the failure-to-thrive profile:

1) Is the majority of the information/entertainment/media product that goes into my mind junk? Would I rather stop putting that junk in my head and start growing up or is the junk so fascinating it is worth my staying stuck? If I choose to stay stuck, am I at least willing to admit that and quit whining to others about the situation I have chosen?

2) Do I put little, if any, nourishing stuff in my head? When was the last time I actually learned something useful? Have I learned enough useful things that I am worth hiring? Marrying?

3) Do I allow myself to be in situations that are socially uncomfortable? Like physical exercise, many things that are uncomfortable actually lead to growth. Do I run from relationships the second I feel discomfort or do I work through the discomfort in order to grow as a friend – employee - relative – future spouse? Do I run from jobs (or job opportunities) the moment I feel uncomfortable or do I learn new job skills, time management, self-discipline, organizational, social and communication skills in order to either get better at the current job or qualify for another one?

4) Am I constantly playing at something or do I give myself time to really digest what is going on, to study my circumstances, relationships, and reactions? What frantic, unproductive activity should I rest from?

5) Honestly: am I still waiting for somebody to spoon-feed me or am I figuring out how to do it myself, that is, figuring out how to meet my own needs in constructive, healthy ways?

I've been through enough birthdays to know this: no knight in shining armor, no fairy godmother, no pill-offering Morpheus will appear one day to cause instant wisdom, instant maturity, instant job-readiness, spouse-readiness or parenting-readiness. They won’t. So I wonder - what can we as a community do to encourage self-discipline, to better value the ability to endure discomfort, to more consistently reward those who engage in the process of growing up and to quit making it easy for so many to stay in the matrix - in the illusion that it is okay to fail to thrive?

Lindsay Lohan - Victim?

My first reaction to today's news? There are times when I want to beat my head against the wall because that would hurt less than the insanity that surrounds us. This was one of those times. I understand that Lindsay Lohan is an addict, that there is no telling what she would actually say if she was in her right mind, and that she probably wouldn’t claim to be a victim if she was thinking clearly. Okay, that’s about as much grace as I can muster right now.

What makes me want to scream is the fact that this is only the echo of the whining I have heard over and over again throughout my life from people who want to be pitied and saved instead of just growing up. It’s hard work to grow up. It takes a lifetime. But we can shorten that process by simply asking ourselves, “How am I responsible for this mess? What can I control in order to clean up the mess? How can I avoid this quandary in the future?” Sometimes the answer includes getting professional help. Trust me, Just Do It.

Now, the “system” is sending Lohan to jail with a long list of “prescription” drugs to help her ease the pain of this “cruel and unusual punishment” for repeatedly driving under the influence of various substances and quite literally telling the court F U. I don’t have all the answers, for Lohan or anybody else. I just don’t think this is it.

I’m pretty much out of grace for self-appointed “victims” quoting the Geneva Convention instead of doing something to help the people that really can’t help themselves. That’s one of the main areas where I’m still trying to grow up myself – grace. It’s partly because I figured out that if I could take off the “HELLO – My Name is Victim” badge … so can every other person who has been victimized in some way –whether real or perceived.

There is a new name badge waiting for those of us who are willing to let go of the victim identity. It reads: HELLO – My Name is Hope.

On happiness

I came across an interesting quote today from an author named Margaret Runbeck: "Happiness is not a station to arrive at, but a manner of traveling." At first glance, I like it. Then I got to thinking… something is wrong here. See, as we travel through life we run into and across misfortune. Pain, death, violence, injustice. Should I travel through those lands riding the “happiness” express?

Come to think of it, are we REALLY endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights that include the “pursuit of happiness”? And then I realized… of course! What the word meant to Runbeck 70 years ago or to our founding fathers back in the eighteenth century was not what the word has come to mean today. Now, the idea of happiness goes something sort of like this: a state where nothing is missing, hurting or wrong and everything – absolutely everything – is pleasurable and exciting!

Hundreds of years ago, the word happiness meant a pleasant and contented mental state. Today, we use “happy” when we’re talking about bliss, which according to the Random House Dictionary is an unalloyed happiness or supreme delight. Contentment, on the other hand, is a peaceful kind of happiness in which one rests without desires, even though every wish may not have been gratified. Consider the pursuit of contentment, about contentment as a manner of traveling. Not very exciting, is it?

I’ve known my share of people intent on pursuing the exciting brand of happiness. They have been persistently disappointed because that state of excitement does not last long. And that discontent is the very engine that drives our consumer culture. We are constantly bombarded with seeds of discontent so that we will go buy something in the effort to be something because what we already have is never good enough - or so they say. I read somewhere that as long as we primarily identify ourselves and others as consumers, we are unable to build true community except with those in our own very narrow economic bracket. That’s a sad and lonely place to be.

Contentment, on the other hand, seems to mark the wise as their constant companion. And so I thought about that as a manner of traveling. When I am at peace with myself and my situation, when I am at rest with the nature of my life, my family, my home, my work – whatever – then I am able to give. When I’m not consumed with grasping for the next shiny thing or hanging on to whatever I’ve managed to accumulate – be it material or interpersonal – then I have open hands with which to give. When I give away goods, services, comfort, instruction, encouragement, companionship… I keep the love (the life-force) flowing. That’s good. And it has never stopped me from improving my work, my home or my relationships.

When my standard becomes Constant Bliss, the love stops and the me-centeredness takes over. That’s not who I want to be, it’s not how I want to travel. I don't want my circumstances in the driver's seat. Give me life, liberty, and the pursuit of contentment. That pursuit is an inner thing; one could say it is a spiritual journey. It’s working for me.

On Motherhood: The Ultimate Perspective-Changer

On the week leading up to Mother’s Day, I found myself pondering Oprah’s recent interview of Ms. Rielle (pronounced a lot like the word “real”) Hunter, a former presidential candidate’s mistress and the mother of the child they conceived while said candidate’s wife was battling cancer.

Here is how one Time magazine columnist described it:
Hunter… has the knack of articulating completely narcissistic and delusional thoughts with a disarming blitheness. She's puzzled that people think her remotely culpable in the affair. For her, the right and obvious thing to do is always to follow "your own truth" and to be really "authentic," even when such authenticity requires you to buy your married lover a secret phone so he can call you without anyone knowing.

What the columnist missed is that Ms. Hunter was still articulating her old belief system while actually living according to the fact that a mother’s decisions are no longer her own – that a mother’s decisions inevitably affect her children. Only a true narcissist can ignore that fact, and Ms. Hunter thankfully isn’t that removed from reality.

This is the truth – the reality – that came out whenever Oprah asked about the contradictions between Ms. Hunter’s personal “truth” and her actions, which included agreeing to lie, at one point telling the world that a different man had fathered her child. Her previous moral compass told her to tell the truth, consequences be damned. But her new identity as a mother caused Ms. Hunter to first think about how her child might feel in the future if this candidate’s daughter one day came to believe that she was to blame for costing her father the presidency.

“My dear,” I wanted to say, in my most sanctimonious elder sister tone of voice, “that is the problem with using yourself as your own moral compass.” A compass that is set to point to me, to my truth, my desires, my preferences, my “needs”, will rarely point to True North. And such a compass will inevitably leave me lost. The trouble with believing that all “truths” are equally valuable is that they are not, at least… not if the consequences matter.

And that has never been more clear – or sadder – than in the case of Ms. Hunter, the once-married Mr. Edwards, and their child. Because in their effort to be “real” to their own selfish desires (that’s right, not “truth” – simple desires), the two new parents caused tremendous pain to many people, not least of which are Mr. Edward’s older children.

Oprah: Do you think you hurt Elizabeth Edwards?
Hunter: She was hurt by the process.

Oprah: You didn't answer the question.
Hunter: Do I think I hurt Elizabeth? Um, you would have to ask Elizabeth that. I don't know.

Oh, BS! I don’t need to ask Elizabeth and neither does Oprah. We don’t need to ask Elizabeth’s children. We don’t need to ask thousands of former John Edwards supporters. And we don’t need to ask the baby. What we do has consequences. That’s the truth that motherhood is beginning to teach Ms. Hunter – that is what is ultimately real, Rielle. At least part of the measure by which we select our moral compass should be the effect that following that compass has on others.

And now, if you will excuse me, I need to go check my own path. What am I leaving behind – as a mother and as a human? Should I be glad that Oprah’s not interested in interviewing me?