On CNN Headline News early this morning was another all too familiar segment at one Starbucks drive through, with Starbucks’ customers who were, ‘Paying it forward’.
Before he retired, I used to occasionally run into a man named Johnny, who I did not particularly like. I thought Johnny was intentionally course, rude, and generally dressed worse than a second hand store could manage if he raised his standards enough to shop at one. His clothing of course was probably better than I dress now, but that is a different topic.
Johnny did one amazing selfless act twice a year that made me feel very small twice a year. Twice a year Johnny received a work bonus check, usually between One Thousand and Fifteen Hundred dollars – after taxes. It was what Johnny did with his bonus check that both amazed and humbled me. Twice a year Johnny would reduce his bonus check down to an equal amount stack of twenty dollar bills.
Johnny would get into into his old tank of a car and head down to a city park where homeless people hung out. Johnny would park his clunker and get out. Starting at one end of the park Johnny worked his way around handing out twenty dollar bills to every homeless person present. If he had any cash left, Johnny headed down to the next park where he knew more homeless folks hung out.
Besides myself, and perhaps to to four other people who could stand being around Johnny, no one of knew he willingly gave away between two and three thousand dollars a year without a second thought. I asked Johnny, ‘Why?’ the second year he was about to go donate, and he said something to the effect of, ‘They need the money, and I do not’.
Around the same time period, a small local group raised over Ten Thousand Dollars through car washes, bake sales, etc. They tried to donate this money to a homeless shelter, but there was a problem over who the donating was, and the money was rejected.
They were not criminals, gang, or drug selling criminals, simply men and women who shared a common vision of helping. Eventually on the fourth or fifth attempt they found a homeless shelter that was happy to take their money. The story made the local news, not because a small volunteer group tried to donate such a large amount of hard earned cash to a homeless shelter, but because of who they were.
Back to Starbucks and the present. I want to say Starbucks is a great company. They do great things for their employees, and they serve hot tasty drinks to me on a regular basis. CNN is a great news service. I depend on CNN when I want to see the news at any odd hour of the day or night.
But why is this, ‘Pay It Forward’ at a Starbucks, McDonalds, or other giant…gaining this type of attention from news behemoths like CNN? Does it really make us feel good to pay for another persons coffee at a drive through when those folks we are paying for are more than able to pay for their own drinks and treats? Is this a new American compassion, our new American public display of selflessness and helping?
How about reinvigorating ‘Pay It Forward’ with real meaning rather than a false feel good? How about doubling your order, whatever it is and giving your second order out to a momentarily fortunate homeless man or woman you spy hanging out on the route you are driving? I bet they really would appreciate a hot, tasty, expensive cup of coffee. I bet they might even be grateful? Don’t expect them to pay it forward as generously as you did when you spent a few ‘spare’ dollars, and a minute of your time to ‘Pay It Forward’.
The small group that tried to do a charitable service I wrote of earlier broke up. The negative publicity sent them back into the shadows, or I should clarify, there was little future publicity about them.
Be on the lookout for Johnny though, he may be out there doing his thing at the same time you hand out your second cup of coffee. You would not want to mistake Johnny for a homeless person, even though he may look like one. Johnny doesn’t need the handout, and probably would not bother with a thank you if you asked for a sincere one. But you might get on television….
Almost every company I have worked for has had a special charity or organization that they support. Most of us have our own special charities that we support in some fashion. One I supported for a long time tried to help children with medical conditions that had no where else to turn to. Some people I knew referred to what they did as experimental surgery, but when all other avenues are exhausted, medical care from the edge becomes someone’s only possibility no matter how experimental it may be.
I would donate some money to this charity every year at tax refund time, or more often if I could afford it. One day my mind was wandering, and I was thinking about the money I gave to my special charity. I was feeling pretty good about it when the idea occurred to me that I was not even covering the cost of some doctor’s bathroom break at the hospital they worked at!
I knew that my thoughts were noble, but in reality, what I gave to that charity was so little, it probably barely paid for the paper it was tracked on. From there I went to donating money to a local church. That seemed pretty fitting. Give money to a church, and they distribute that money out to those in need.
I am in church one morning listening to the priest talk about going to a city one hundred miles away for some shopping, a steak dinner, and a movie. At this point in my life, I had maybe five dollars free for my whole weekend entertainment. I did some quick calculating in my head, and I determined that it would take a few months of my donations to pay for one trip such as the priest was talking about. I thought about the last of a four day old casserole I had eaten for dinner last night, and somehow my dinner and his did not balance out.
I was trying hard to make an impact, and do the right thing, but it was obvious I was not in even close to the middle of the income level of this church, and it was doubtful my few dollars a Sunday were doing anything for anyone really.
About this time, I started doing volunteer work, and that was gratifying at times. The only problem was it was hard to fit my free time into a groups need. So volunteering became sporadic at best. I found a homeless shelter that needed money and food, and that was pretty rewarding for a few years. I could see I was making a direct impact on peoples lives right where I live, and that made me happy.
A group of gay men and women who wanted to do something charitable for their community started doing car washes, bake sales, and other fund raisers to raise money. When they raised over ten-thousand dollars, they tried to give it away to the homeless shelter I was supporting with my few dollars every few weeks. A funny thing happened though, the founder of the shelter refused the money! He claimed that as a Christian he could not accept money from those people…. I wrote him and told him the money I gave him came from playing poker, and I won my money in part from drug dealers, gang bangers, pimps, and addicts. Certainly my money was no better than the money he refused. I ended making it clear, that my money would be going somewhere else. Thankfully, so did about half of the charitable donators also agree with me, and gave their money elsewhere.
Now I give to a charity that spends the money right where I live, helping people in my city and state, and I feel good about that. I know that my money is going to things I can see, appreciate, and hopefully those being helped do too. I do not my time often as I found in general, donating my time was more painful than it was rewarding which is too bad, I wish it were not so.
If you have little or no money and want to do something, look around your neighborhood. If you pay attention, you will find someone or some group needs your help. If you donate to a charity, make sure it is one that makes you feel good, not just a charity that makes feel like you are fulfilling an obligation.
I was discussing charity with a friend the other day, and I have to admit he was rather puzzled by my charitable actions this week as I talked about them. The conversation started innocently enough about some little thing, and eventually led to charity. I am a great believer in intelligently sharing some of what I have with others who are not so lucky. I am lucky enough to know that I am where I am, and the people I give money too are is by a difference of a few critical choices in our separate lives.
Those people I give money to made some choices in their life, that either I was not required to make the choices they did, or I made a different better choice than they did. I would like at times to think I made better choices, but I do not know that is a true statement. I think it is closer to truth to say I chose not to go as deeply into the results of bad choices I may have made in my life as others, now less fortunate did.
I was leaving a museum a few weeks ago, and there was a man panhandling as people were walking to their cars. He asked me for any change I might have. I looked into my wallet and I had two bills, a five and a one dollar bill. Neither was change, but I recognized the shake in his hands, and I pulled out the five and gave it to him. He mumbled a quick thank you, and lurched and trembled off to get his bottle of salvation.
Yesterday I was leaving a Borgstore parking lot, and there at the parking lot exit sat an old woman in a wheel chair pulled onto the medium ’selling’ paper flowers for a dollar each. To make her lot in life worse, she was missing one leg at the knee. Her clothes were not warm enough for the weather. I drove right past her to the frustration of a passenger in my truck. I did not give her a single penny, or even trade a dollar for a paper flower.
It did not seem out of the ordinary for me, but the person with me could not believe I didn’t give the old woman some money! There she was begging in the middle of the street on a cold and windy day, and I drove right past. I mentioned I had given five bucks to a wino last week at a park. It made perfect sense to me, why I acted the way I did, and I started to explain my thinking.
The Wino at the park could be me except for a few better made choices on my part, and luck. He probably had a shelter he could eat at, and a place to sleep. He would never be able to hold a job, nor will he quit drinking until he is dead, or committed to a place he can no longer drink. To not give him a little money when I had extra would be cruel to my thinking. He needed money to drink, and all he could do was beg for money to drink with.
The Woman in a wheelchair with one leg missing was better off by far. She could not have put herself on the medium because she was too old, and with only one leg it would have been impossible to do by herself. Her clothing was not old or dirty, and I thought she was not dressed correctly for the weather by choice. Her wheel chair was fairly new, well made, and of good quality. Someone had posed her in place there on the medium. Of the five or six cars in front of me who all gave her paper money, she gave a flower to only one, but she took money from all of them.
In my view of both situations, the Woman in the wheel chair was able to earn an income from doing something other than blatantly begging for money. The Wino on the other hand was in pain from lack of alcohol, and was reduced to begging to get money for what his body craved. One person was physically sick, and the other was only handicapped. One person was a beggar and the other had found an easy way to make a good living with little effort. My choices made perfect sense to me. The Man needed and the woman wanted.
He told me you buy some bibles, not expensive bibles, but bibles that could be expensive, if you do not look too close. Some bibles with red lettering, because red stands out, and looks more expensive. You follow the obituaries, and try to track down addresses. Once you have the address you put the name of the surviving spouse on the front of the bible in gold leaf. Then you wait until a few days after the funeral.
You show up in the evening when you are sure no other family members are around. That is when the real aloneness is setting in and grief is at a very high level. You knock on the door and when they answer you tell them the story about how their spouse had this very bible on lay away, and they were going to pick it up this week. You continue with how you happen to be reading something by the obituary section of the newspaper, and recognized the name.
You continue, now that you have their grief pouring out, and their need to touch anything that belonged to their beloved passed on spouse, and they had paid you half the money, and there still is a payment for the bible, and are they interested? Of course they are, they are desperate to bring their spouse back to life! You fill in the dead space telling them that the dead spouse was going to have an inscription written on the inside, so the bible would become a family heirloom. No you do not know where or what, only that they had mentioned it in passing, the day they put it on lay away.
Of course the surviving spouse thinking you are an angel in human form, pays you whatever amount you told mentioned was left to pay on the bible. They are overwhelmed with emotion – and you just took advantage of their grief, and took money away from them that you should not have taken. That is a really ugly, some might even say pathetic scam that used to be popular when there was less money flying around than there is today, and people were more trusting.
Today scammers are more suave. They set up internet sites, they send you snail mail, they stand on side walks, at intersections, and beg from the corner. They are making a fortune, and nobody seems to care. The better ones I have heard of are making more than the average income in the United States, and all they have to do is look poor and needy.
I watch them at intersections doing there scams. People, believing they are doing something good can’t dig into their pockets quickly enough. They give change, dollar bills, they give five dollar bills, and the people taking it are making a wonderful living. So good in fact, they work some corners in shifts because the money in their buckets gets too heavy and to obvious.
They also send mail, sometimes with little religious trinkets, and some story about how the mission they represent is helping to feed so many starving orphans somewhere. If you search on the internet they do not exist. If you expect more than one mailing form them, they do not exist. They are a quick, one stop shop. One stop shopping, into your wallet and out again.
No one likes to be seen as cold and uncaring, but everyone can donate responsibly if they only take time to think before they act on impulse. It is not that hard to give money to scammers. It is no harder to think before you do. If you never heard of them before, they probably won’t exist in a few weeks. If they want any amount of money from you right now, they are scamming you.
If you want to donate to a cause, donate through your church, the International Red Cross, or another well known organization. Do not be one of thousands who blindly give money to people who find stealing from you is easier than working for a living, and it pays better. There always will be a great need for charity in the world, but give wisely, not foolishly.
I had some interesting musings collide together which I think are worth writing about. Together they make for an interesting landscape, and a platform to promote a couple of Female Heroes right in the family! The other day I was thinking about female heroes, Matt Langdon’s Hero Workshop, and chats I had with with some family members.
Matt at HeroWorkshop reminds me that a hero is not some mythical being, but heroes live and breathe sitting or standing right next to me. Too often we just do not see them for what they are. Unfortunately, many of us have been programmed to replace true heroes with movie stars, gangsters, or band members.
I was talking with a family member who is trying hard to make positive changes in people’s lives by giving of herself, and her time. She meets and speaks with people who are lost and deserted due to personal circumstance. She is in there doing what she can, showing them there can be a better future if they choose it. This is a noble undertaking. This is awesome stuff. What a great thing to do to, and a great way to help others!
A second family member is a Case Manager for a very specialized group of people. She works in their life removing obstacles for them, and helping with problems they can not manage on their own. I am sure most of the people she helps appreciate what she does for them.
To some people, her career, or life choice may sound pretty ho-hum. And my writing about it just some yada, yada, as I fill in another paragraph. From my viewpoint, she has become a true hero! When I think of all the people she must have helped over the years…wow! I sure am proud of her, and now very mindful of what she is doing for others, making their life a little better, and helping their life go forward, which sometimes is no easy task!
I am as lazy as many others in the hero department. I throw a few bucks into the Salvation Army bucket at Christmas, and slip a few dollars to a homeless person now and then. I also donate some of my income to a few formal organizations. But as far as using myself as a tool to directly help make the lives of others better? I would do a better job herding cats across the prairie.
Everyone who chooses to take on a role of service to others is someone to be admired. Anyone can look good, or say something witty in front of a camera for a few seconds. For a few hundred dollars we can all look a little like the rich and famous for a few hours. I say a real hero in comparison is someone who climbs out of bed everyday, go to a job, or calling that not many people could do at all, let alone be any good at, and does what they can to make lives of others better.
At the end of the day these modern day female heroes know they are making a real difference in the lives of people who really need their help. Too many of us coming into direct contact with someone who really could use our help, we normally look away and pretend we do not see them. What these woman do almost every day serves to remind me, how big of a difference one person makes when they choose to. I sure am proud of these two women, and what they are doing! I hope others are too, and they let them know about it also.
I hope when you think about someone you know who chooses to serve others, you think about how they make important changes in people’s lives. What they do is not a dream job, and is probably heartbreaking and thankless at times. Yet they still get out of bed and do it the next day. Maybe you are one of these folks? If you are doing a service for others, be very proud, for you are a hero too!
There is an old saying, that probably is not well known any longer. The saying is, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” This saying was first uttered so long ago it seems the author has faded into history, although the advice is as true today as it was when first heard.
As with all good sayings, there is more to this saying than the few words that is takes to write it. Each of us owns our own life, and we have the right to choose how we wish to live it. Where conflict comes in, eg, the horse not drinking, is when we care about someone. We care about someone, but their life choices, and our life choices are not the similar enough. Because we care about someone we have a tendency to jump in and try to correct situations when we are not invited to. We like to think that because we care about them, we are entitled to have an opinion or voice in any situation of theirs we disagree with.
Some people have to go through life facing difficulties. They need what a hard life brings to complete their goals in their life, whether spiritual, or character centered. Each problem facing them is a new opportunity to either grow into what they envision themselves to be, or to reaffirm what they believe they have become. Sort of like practicing for an event, it is hard for these people to practice without something wrong in their lives.
Unfortunately for some of us, there is nothing wrong in other peoples lives. Only what they have created or manifested is what is happening to them. To us they live at the edge of their economy, they hang out with the wrong people, they walk alone in the wrong places at the wrong time. They do a hundred things that they should not be doing – in our opinion. On a cold day, the heat is on and the door is left open, because the sun is shining and they are feeling closed in. Then next week an envelope arrives in the mail, and suddenly they can not afford their heating bill.
I believe generally it is wrong to help someone who continuously places themselves and/or their family in these types of situations. This thinking may sound cold hearted or just plain bad, but it is true. Whether the currency is money, time, or something else, our gifts are too valuable to waste on someone who does not value what we give. These gifts we have accumulated through our lives are not to be wasted. When gifts we have are given to someone who does not value them, what happens? To us it looks as if they have wasted their gifts, and now they are wasting our gifts too. Do not give away your gifts any quicker than you would give away your keys, and your home address. Your gifts are not necessarily overly scarce, but they are not endless either. They are to be used wisely and for the right reasons.
There is another old quote that applies in these situations, “Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.”
Helping others is a wonderful thing if it is done with the proper attitude, and the proper perspective. Throwing a dollar bill to the person that stands on the street corner with a pail every day is throwing away your financial gifts. Think of how much better use you can put your gifts to if they are given at the right time for the right reason to someone who is really ready for them? If you wait for the right time and the right reason to share your gifts, you will discover so much more than what you have given. The person you choose to share your gifts with will also receive so much more than a few dollars, or a little of your time. You will find you both have something to share in, and you both will feel fulfilled, and grateful, albeit for different reasons. Finally, in being frugal with sharing your gifts, you will find the greatest gift of all is letting someone make their own way, in their own fashion, at their own pace. Once you realize you have found this gift, you will know the people you were trying to help are perfect just the way they are! And they will know you finally understand what they have been trying so hard to teach you.
Technorati Tags: sharing, caring, family, charity, spirit
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