Susan Tweit – Growing Generosity

These are tough times: the economy tanked last year, the stock market took a corresponding dive, unemployment is up more than in a decade or more, and jobs are not easy to come by. All of which makes it a great time to cultivate generosity and help each other.
Remember the movie “Pay It Forward”? In the screen version of Catherine Ryan Hyde’s novel, the hero, 12-year-old, Trevor, responds to a social studies assignment to think of and implement an idea for changing the world with this suggestion:
“I do something real good for three people. And when they ask how they can pay it back, I say they have to Pay It Forward. To three more people. Each. So nine people get helped. Then those people have to do twenty-seven.”
As Trevor explains the concept, if each person helped in turn helps three more people, the “doing real good” quickly multiples to eighty-one people, then two hundred forty-three, then seven hundred twenty-nine, then two thousand, one hundred eighty-seven people, and so on.
It may be harder to imagine being generous in tough times, but generosity rewards us in ways that go far beyond the mere dollar value of our contributions.
Recent research shows that generosity enriches us: materially, emotionally, and spiritually. Selfishness, on the other hand, is relentlessly impoverishing, narrowing our lives and relationships, and starving our communities.
Literature is full of stories about the benefits of generosity and the perils of miserliness, from Native American Coyote tales to Charles Dickens’ “The Christmas Carol,” and “Paying It Forward.” Happiness truly is not measured in our accumulation of riches, whatever they may be.
Here are some tips on how to cultivate generosity and pay it forward in your daily life:
Focus on the issue that are most compelling to you. The abundance of worthy causes can be paralyzing; picking one or several to concentrate on makes your resources and efforts go farther.
Make generosity a daily practice, not just something to check off once a year. You don’t need to donate money every day–though if you can, do!–just act in generous ways all the time.
Giving isn’t just about money. Generosity takes many forms: Offer a smile when one isn’t expected, do something helpful out of the blue, lend your talent without engaging the calculus of return, call someone you love for no reason, forgive an old hurt, cheerfully do a task that isn’t your responsibility, go out of your way to enrich another life.
Remember Trevor’s power of multiplication: If each of us does something “real good” for three others, and they spread the generosity to three more–each–pretty soon the original three have by extension helped out two thousand, one hundred eighty-seven people, and then six thousand, five hundred fifty-one, and so on.
At that rate, generosity will spread faster than the H1N1 flu.
Imagine changing the world by the power of simple giving. We can do it, if we start now.

Copyright 2009 Susan J. Tweit. Originally published in the Salida Mountain Mail.