Yesterday while walking home from the grocery store I passed a woman selling Spare Change News (a paper published by the Homeless Empowerment Project and sold by Boston's homeless and low income). She was singing "spare change news" over and over in a sort of bluesy monotone. It was actually really beautiful. I happened to have $5 in my pocket, so I gave it to her.
It's just $5 and for many of you, that might seem like nothing. But it wasn't nothing to me, because I'm currently living off savings and I'm getting a little bit stingy.
When I was young and had an infinite knowledge of the world, I thought charitable giving was selfish - just a way for people to feel better about themselves - and that made it something not worth doing. I think this was around the time I read The Fountainhead, and if you were ever a teenager and read Ayn Rand, maybe you can forgive me.
It doesn't matter why you do something good, just that you do it. If you need to give to feel better about your rabid consumerism, fine. If you give so you don't feel guilty, fine. If you give because someone tells you to, or everyone else it doing it, that's great. If you give your time instead of money, or if you make a sacrifice - like reducing your electricity & heating usage - for the good of mankind, that's wonderful. If you want to one-up each other by doing all these things and more, I won't stop you.
Do something nice for someone today. You will be doing it for all of the above reasons, and that's just fine with me.
Edit: I just realized today is known as "Giving Tuesday." I had no idea that was a thing - I guess it's a happy accident I posted this today. I propose we just make every day "Giving Tuesday".
