Generosity

The celebrity culture in America has fostered an unrealistic concept of what it means to be a generous, compassionate person in society. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are lauded as models of humanitarian philanthropy. Howard Hughes designed the model that billionaires follow. The medical Howard Hughes Foundation, appropriately founded by the psychosomatic, germ-phobic eccentric, was Howard's solution to avoiding paying personal income taxes. By placing his millions in a tax-exempt non-profit, Howard paid negligible personal taxes while he was alive.

If every citizen paid his/her taxes fairly and equitably, government could be transformed into a prospering organ for improving the quality of life for all citizens. If tax breaks for corporations and businesses were eliminated universally, the people would benefit. Corporate lawyers have developed slick machinery to rip off the public treasury over and over again with very little given back to the public and profits given to wealthy shareholders, who have lawyers to help them to avoid paying taxes.

Bringing generosity into the individual life is a matter of scale and common sense. Generosity isn't money or gifts. Generosity is a process of openness, fairness and spontaneous cooperation. Look around you right now. There is someone in your life who can benefit from your time or effort in some small way today. If you do this survey of your own life every day, you will find plenty to do to improve the quality of life in your own sphere of influence. You can change someone's life right now with a phone call or some generous action.

Our society is troubled. The economic times are difficult in part due to the selfishness and carelessness of people in the world of finance who thought of nobody but themselves. Our media has indulged the worst of us by focusing on violence and dysfunction in order to satisfy our curiosity and voyeurism. Negativity and alienation have blossomed. Staring at iPhones in public is the norm.

I try to acknowledge what I can do every day to improve the quality of my own life and the lives which touch mine. My capabilities require a small scale of generosity. I am not wealthy. I have some physical limitations. I accept these limits and move on with what I can do, without getting hung up on what I would ideally like to do or should do from a comparative perspective.

By planning carefully and using my time responsibly and efficiently, I am able to do something proactive and constructive most days. It doesn't leave much time for watching TV or staring at the computer monitor's buffet of distractions. I don't own an iPhone. It would take time away from my reading books, observing real life around me or helping a friend. My scale of generosity is humble indeed, but I take comfort in knowing that there are millions of people trying to do good in a similar way. My guess is that we are keeping the planet moving along in a positive direction just as effectively as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.