Series on Helping

Helping 106 – The First Step

Mon, October 31, 2011 No Comments by Robert Shelden

Overcoming The Fear Of The First Step
By Robert Shelden

We’ve published a series of posts about “Helping” in the past, and Robert’s discussion of CYAR (Colorado Youth At Risk) is a great addition to that series. Welcome to the forum Robert, and thanks for the contribution!

A number of years ago, I was exposed to a non-profit, youth mentoring organization called CYAR (Colorado Youth at Risk).  CYAR focuses on transforming the lives of teenage students through community -based mentoring and intensive training.   Like many people, I had a desire to “give back” to my community in some meaningful way and CYAR appeared to match my social values. Read more »

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Seeing The Good – Helping 105

Sun, April 10, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

As we go through the process of searching for ways to cut money from our national budget, we should be doing some soul-searching as well.

You can watch the political parties lining up with their masters and pets, trying to focus the effort on the places where they want the budget cut. To do this, they need to demonize and dehumanize the people who they want to cut funding from.

One side wants to cut funding and “pork” that goes primarily to the wealthy class in our country. They look to move the taxpayer dollars toward those on the lower end of the income scale, and away from those on the upper end. In addition, they target defense spending as the best place to reduce cost.

The defense industry argument is an easy one to make – I’ve written before about the amazing money we could save if we cut our defense spending to twice as much as the next biggest defense spender in the world – $600 – $700 billion a year. It’s staggering.

But there’s a human side to that. Defense contractors are the biggest “welfare recipients” in the nation, and when they get that taxpayer money, they pass some of it on to their employees in the form of jobs – often really good jobs. These people who have these jobs aren’t demons and crazies. They are (for the most part) good people – often hard-working people – trying to get by and do a good job.

As we cut the defense industry’s “welfare” ticket back, many of those good and hard-working folks will be out of a job.

The other side wants to cut funding for any programs that move money toward the middle or lower classes in the country, while retaining programs that continue to benefit the upper class. They typically demonize the waste in government programs like Medicare and Social Security – these are the places they want to make the big cuts.

But there’s a human side to these cuts as well – much easier to see. While there is surely waste and fraud in any bureaucracy – be it Medicare or Defense contracting – there is also a great need among the poorest “class” in our country. As we cut these programs back, those with the greatest need will feel the greatest pain.

These people aren’t demons and crazies. They are (for the most part) good people – often hard-working people – trying to get by and do a good job.

The budget has both a revenue and a spending side. Both sides need to be addressed. On the spending side alone, as we pound the table with our strong opinions about who we should be cutting government funding for, let’s do our best to understand clearly what those cuts mean, who will be hurt by the cuts, and what that pain will look like.

Even when we hold strong opinions about who should receive the biggest cuts, let’s try and see the real people who will feel the pain of the cuts. Let’s see the good within those people, rather than demonizing them.

The same logic holds true for cuts to overseas programs that the government funds, or cuts to outreach programs in churches, temples, and mosques. It’s even more stark in those cases, as the recipients of the help often look much different than we do, and live much differently than we do. It’s much easier to not see and understand those more distant people, and much easier to see only the bad things about those people.

We’ve all got good and bad within us, right? We’ve all got things we’re proud of, and things we’re ashamed of. When we look at someone else, we need to recognize the same holds true for them. We choose whether we’re seeing the good or the bad in that person.

Until we see the good in a person, we’ll not be able to provide real and meaningful help, or find real and meaningful solutions. We’ll not be able to open the Giving Circle.

The Poorest Person In The World – Helping 104

Wed, April 6, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

Mahatma Gandhi believed every single act was important. He suggested once to “think of the poorest person you have ever seen and ask if your next act will be of any use to him.”

In a world where we’re generally evaluating each act on its ability to help us gain more power, wealth, or comfort, this is an interesting twist of perspective.

Or am I wrong about that? Maybe we don’t evaluate our every act to determine how it might help us gain more power, wealth, or comfort. Maybe the majority of our actions “just sorta’ happen” – without much thought.

Of course, a psychologist would probably argue with me that our unconscious mind is, in fact, doing some level of evaluation before we act – that beneath the most (apparently) mindless act is some level of measurement and decision. The scales used in that measurement and decision-making are often hard to fathom, having been built up over our lifetime to serve some hidden set of scale-masters.

Makes sense. After all, we’d be crippled by analysis if every single little thing we did needed to be analyzed before we could act.

But what if…

we were just a little more thoughtful in our process? What if more of our actions did involve a conscious effort to predict who will benefit from that action? And just as important, who will be hurt by our action.

 

Rubbing Shoulders With Need – Helping 103

Fri, April 1, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

Here’s a quote I read recently from Chabad.com: “The very fact you know about someone who is in trouble means that in some way you are able to help. Otherwise, why would this knowledge have entered your world?”

Why, indeed?

After all, the world is packed full of disaster and hardship. Every minute of every day, really bad things are happening someplace in the world, and there’s something you could do to help in many of those cases.

It could be completely overwhelming. You could become paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of the help that others need in this world.

For that matter, there are places in your own life where you can use help, right? There are folks in the world who have the ability to provide some of that help to you, though you are one of countless places where their help could be of value.

My Lord, how’s a person to know what to do, where to give help, how to give help, where to ask for help?

Every day, your journey takes you down the path of life. That path moves you through some tight quarters, where your life brushes up against the lives of others. You rub a shoulder here, you bump an elbow there.

And in the process, you glimpse the ability to help now and again. A gift offered to you – the opportunity to give and to help.

Otherwise, why would you have brushed up against the understanding of the need?

 

Zero Sum – Giving 102

Wed, March 30, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

When something is finite, transactions are always zero sum. That is, there’s only so much of the thing, so for someone to see a gain, someone else sees a loss. Nothing grows, it only changes hands.

It’s an economic theory, or game theory. Like cutting a cake – if somebody gets a bigger slice, somebody else gets a smaller slice. It’s a perspective that sees life as a ledger sheet, and in order for my ledger column to grow, someone else’s must shrink.

Living life with a “zero sum” outlook is why we have wars. It’s why most violent crime occurs. If there’s a devil, he works hard to help us see all of life as a zero-sum enterprise.

“Taking” results from the zero sum outlook.

Is Creation a zero-sum game in the eyes of G-d? Put aside your view of G-d for a moment – or whether or not G-d even exists – and think of the universe as it might appear through the eyes of something big enough to see it all.

The universe (or multiverse or Creation or whatever it is you choose to call the Big Picture) came into being. Most cultures and religions have fascinating Creation Myths. Scientists today see the universe as having exploded into existence with a Big Bang about 13 million years ago.

Either way, something came about that wasn’t taken from something else, right? I don’t know any science or Creation Myth that talks about our universe or world being created by taking a world from someone else.

It was Created, or it rose into existence in some way.

Giving is like that too. We’re prisoners inside the walls of our existence, and the key that releases us from that prison is the gift we receive when we give.

It’s not zero-sum. In giving, what we receive is far greater than what we give.

If there’s a G-d, He works hard to help us see all of life as a giving enterprise.

 

The Shape Of Help – 101

Sun, March 27, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

I suspect most folks have the same kind of angst that I’ve had lately about the disaster in Japan. We see folks in great need, and there’s something deep inside us that wants to reach out and help in some way.

There are lots of relief agencies who will supply resources as they can, and we can surely contribute resources to these sorts of agencies. Generally when this sort of disaster happens, resources pour into relief agencies, but there’s always the logistical bottleneck at the point of disaster – trying to find a way to get the resources to the point where they can really help.

For those of us who give the resources, we have some feeling that we’ve done something to help, albeit a distant hand offered through many brokers in-between. Detached.

I knew someone once who would get wild hairs to “help someone”. Once, at the end of a dinner among several people, she insisted we box up the many leftovers and give them to homeless folks someplace. We were in a town none of us knew, but we boxed up leftovers and ended up somewhere we probably shouldn’t have been, finding a way to share the leftovers with folks who seemed to want them.

At the time, I thought the exercise silly and of little value. It seemed to me that all we were doing was soothing someone’s guilty conscience about being more well-off than others, but we weren’t really doing anything effective to solve the problem of homelessness or feeding people. We all humored her, and she got to feel warm and fuzzy inside, like she’d really done something.

That’s how I felt at the time.

Looking back, I still see some amount of silliness in what we did that evening. But far less than I did at the time. She did, after all, reach out with real help to someone who needed it. She looked them in the eye and food went from her hand to theirs. Well actually, it was me looking them in the eye, and my hand doing the handoff, since it was clear we were not in the safest place in town. But still…

It was a true gesture of of personal help to someone. Did we spend more in gas delivering the help than the help was worth? Maybe, but I doubt the guy who ate well that night as a result of the gesture thought much about it. Or cared.

Our world is so fractured these days, and people are so insulated from each other. True interactions of deep engagement between one human and another are becoming more rare all across the globe. We see someone who needs help, but the only “reasonable” way we can offer help is to send a check to some relief agency, and hope a reasonable portion of the money is used in a wise way.

Mind you, I’m not arguing against relief agencies in any way – these folks do excellent work all across the globe, and the world needs them to continue their excellent missions.

What I think I’m arguing for is something extremely personal. True compassion and true giving come from the most personal and deep place in our heart. Most of us can’t really give that sort of help across the Pacific. Those opportunities for real and personal giving are much closer to us every single day.

I write a lot about the “circle of giving” thing. It’s different than a “ledger”, which is very binary and linear. In a ledger, I give a thing, and I get a checkmark for something I receive in return. It’s scorekeeping. When you keep score, it’s a transaction that ends as soon as the box in the ledger sheet is filled in.

The Giving Circle isn’t a ledger, but only works at a very personal level. Inside each of us is a deep and abiding compassion for others. At its most powerful, this compassion emerges as I reach my hand out to help someone else. As they reach their hand back to me, and accept the help, the circle becomes complete and grows. Their acceptance of my help “gives back” to me as a deep fulfillment of that desire within my heart to help others.

No ledger. No scorekeeping. Pure and simple sharing of compassion and gratitude, each feeding the other. A complete circle of giving.

Compassion that keeps a ledger feeds the ego. It’s a sense of pity for others who might have less good fortune.

Compassion that builds a Giving Circle is born of humility. Understanding the suffering of another allows the voice of our desire to give, and opens the heart to receive the gift of acceptance and gratitude in return. Giving becomes a privilege, and honor, and a gift received.

I’m a reasonable and practical person. There’s both good and bad in that. When it comes to “giving”, maybe it’s time we looked for “unreasonable” ways to help. Maybe we should look for opportunities to get in the car and deliver some food to somebody who needs it.

There’s nothing reasonable about true compassion.