Chris Belland's - "Hindsights & Insights"
Sunday, July 18, 2010
The selfish, unsure but goodly nature of charity and good deeds

By CHRIS BELLAND Citizen Columnist

As Shakespeare similarly said of mercy, charity is twice blessed, it blesses both he who gives it and he who receives it -- at least in theory.

These are strange times of unprecedented need juxtaposed against massive wealth accumulation and, sadly, a burgeoning distrust of our fellow man. Against the backdrop of the Great Recession, with national and global loss of jobs, homes and whole industries, we are daily bombarded with hard-to-believe stories of estates, paintings and private yachts being routinely bought and sold for tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. We hear about vast philanthropies being set aside for a world audience of the poor. It makes me feel cheap and inconsequential in what charities I choose, like whatever I do or give is but a drop in an ocean of need. Having given, I sometimes feel suspicious of who really gets and benefits from my paltry donations when I read of the graft, corruption and diversion of some charitable organizations. Too many people, too many rules, too disconnected from the results.

I keep doing it though, and I suspect even those with less resources do so, too, and I casually wonder why. I wonder why I give $10 or $20 to the slick stranger who appears at the gas pump with the sad tale of woe needing money for diapers, gas or food. I know he's lying. He probably knows that I know. Grifters and street people have a gift of sensing weakness, not unlike a predator surveying the most likely candidate in the herd. I give it to him anyway. Sometimes, instead of cash, I buy a meal for an apparently homeless person standing in front of the grocery store, or slip a twenty to some of the regulars of our town who I know don't even have an idea where they are. How is it I feel guilty and good all at once?

I guess I feel guilty because I may be greasing their slide into oblivion by giving them money for drink or drugs and because I don't like being a sucker, especially when I know it or suspect it before it happens -- or after, for that matter. I have so much more than most, including people who care about me, a place to be safe, a meaningful job, for the most part good health and an optimistic outlook that passes for belief in something, and it makes me feel good to share. So, I have an angel on one shoulder saying, "Good man" and a devil for a conscience on the other saying, "Tightwad, is that all you're gonna give 'em?"

I have often said I am my mother's son, meaning I try to emulate her good works, which she seemed to dispense more easily than I. I remember her stories of her own mother, whose house was near the railroad station in Beaver, Pa., and frequented by those bygone transients they used to call "hoboes." Her back door was secretly marked by them as a place where "a fella could always get a meal" for some inconsequential trade of service like raking the leaves. This was the legacy of charity passed from Grandma Snyder to her daughter to me and my brother, Fred. Fred lives in Nicaragua, and usually has one pocket full of hard candies and the other full of coins for the ubiquitous urchins of his town in a country second in this hemisphere only to Haiti in its degree of poverty.

There are probably few human undertakings more personal than charity. Only you and God know what you put in the envelope at church, and only you know in your heart whether it is prudent benevolence for the benefit of your fellow man or just a way of covering your bases with the Big Guy. At the same time, I am only marginally impressed with those who make hundred million dollar donations or bequests of vast holdings, for it is just the excess of great luck or hard work or even brilliance and it is simply the right thing to do. I mean, how many yachts and houses can you have? What does impress me is giving when it means a personal sacrifice. When John D. Rockefeller, whose estate has probably given more to charities than any one human in history, was a young man and making $4 a week, he was giving fifty cents to his church. That's meaningful charity. Of course, all this is just my opinion. I may be wrong.

My own acts of charity may be for some selfish reasons of how it makes me feel. While I'm not always sure about the benefit of what I give or do for another, I can say there is an overall goodness in all gestures made without an expectation of an in-kind return, and it is embodied in the meaning of: "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

Chris Belland's Hindsights & Insights column appears here on Sundays. Belland also writes a biweekly column on environmental issues, which runs in our Sunday magazine, Solares Hill. His previous columns are available on his blog: hindsightsandinsights.blogspot.com. Contact Chris at cbelland@keysnews.com.