I don’t really care where or how you give back. I really don’t. But I am firmly convinced that we all need to do it. It makes unimaginable differences for us to get out of our own heads and share something with another person…both for them and for us.
And we all know that, really. But here’s the thing.
I’ve noticed this huge assumption in our culture right now that we are supposed to fix all.the.things for all.the.people right.this.very.second. And if we can’t, you know, undo all racism and all sexual abuse and all poverty and all child hunger (and on and on), then we shouldn’t even try. Or if someone does try, they get mocked because it isn’t big enough or flashy enough to fix all.the.things. The gesture seems so small in the face of the huge mess we make of things that we punish them for daring to call their effort valuable.
Can I please encourage you to find and eliminate that kind of thinking? Please? If you have been avoiding doing that one thing you can do because it can’t fix all.the.things–that’s okay. Do it anyway. If you’ve been harping on people whose honest attempts to do one small things didn’t seem sincere or grandiose enough–could you consider giving them the benefit of the doubt?
It does take a lot of time and energy to give back well. It can come across and condescending or smarmy, like when we give money or time but don’t stop to see the person who’s in need of it. Or it can be utterly useless and self-serving, like sending sweaters and broken junk to a donation drive for hurricane relief.
But it can be done well. And we need to keep trying and learning and doing it so that we can learn to do it well. I tell my kids, “How do you get better at doing something? You practice!” And the same holds true for me and giving.
So what can you do?
Well, our PTO stumbled on a neat way to help out another school that was devastated by the hurricanes right before the start of school. We did a fundraiser with our kids. Then we discovered that we can use that money to purchase books online for their school’s Scholastic Book Fair. They can tell us which books they can use, and we can order them as a donation which Scholastic will then ship straight to their school for free. AND the money we spend counts toward their profit which determines the Scholastic Bucks they earn through their Book Fair (which they can use to get even more books), so in effect, the money our kids raised does double-duty in helping this school replace the books it lost (ALL of them, people…they lost ALL of them).
This route took a bit of research. And chats with our librarian. And a phone call to our Book Fair rep. But (I think) we are actually going to be able to give back in a tangible way. Our “help” is actually going to be useful to them. We can meet an actual need.
We don’t have to solve ALL the problems of EVERY school that was devastated by a hurricane this fall. We don’t even have to solve all of the problems of THIS one school (they’re still in temporary buildings, they still don’t have pencils or paper or anything). BUT we can do this one thing and do it well.
And so can you. Look for the one thing that you can do, for someone or a group of someones who needs what you can offer. And then do another. And another. And if we all make that our pattern, I think we’ll make a bigger difference than we can ever imagine.
