This post is likely going to upset some folk. If you’re prone to jumping to conclusions, knee-jerk reactions, or other methods of getting all “het up” before you know what I’m working toward saying, you may want to skip this one.
The recent events in Haiti are horrific. Beyond terrible. Such loss and such lingering tragedy. As strange as it may sound to some reading this, I have spent a number of hours just bawling my eyes out for being one human, lacking in superpower or miracle dispensing ability. Sometimes, life is just heavy on the heart and mind; a weight strung upon barbed wire that swings slow and ponderous pain for all the things that cannot be remedied as quickly as they happen.
This said, I am at once angered and somewhat insulted at how people tend to treat this the same way they treat so many things. It’s all “text to this number for a $10 donation” or “send a bag of canned goods” or “toss in some change to the collection plate”.
And then…? What?
Usually it’s just “carry on as usual” and the silent addendum hangs, unspoken for all its all too obvious, “I’ve done ‘my part’.”
The term I use for this mindset is “limousine charity”. It’s the mindset that says because you give 5-15% pre-tax or some monthly contribution or you are the first in line when a tragedy happens somewhere around the world that you’re relieved of any obligation to more than that donation. That, somehow, the once a payday or once a month or once a tragedy contribution is somehow a fulfillment against all need to revisit or reflect upon the reality of this world’s unending need or suffering.
It’s almost as if humans hate having to face the realization that every day, somewhere, someone is hungry, is dying of a curable disease, is living a life you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy (for whatever reasons or conditions). As if, every day, right here in “Hometown, America”, there aren’t thousands of people stumbling around helpless, homeless, or hapless who would and could benefit from more direct attention and focus.
I often tell my friends that I refuse to give to charities anymore because I think their existence actively supports the “limousine charity” mindset. I also tell them that, were each of us to do something direct and overt in our immediate sphere of proximity and day to day life, most of the problems would quickly resolve themselves.
Think about that a moment. You know that guy or gal who just got laid off? Or the woman in the next cube/row/department who is struggling to support a dying parent? Or the kid you always see wandering around in ripped up clothes or worn our shoes? Or how about the neighbor who just lost their spouse (divorce, abandonment, jail, death, who knows the reason? why does it matter?)? Or the co-worker in your department that you know is skipping lunch today because they cannot afford to eat? The list just goes on and on and on… right in the midst of charity drives for [cause X], undoubtedly a wonderful and very deserving cause, but, in my oh-so-humble opinion, not when it means one feels justified in ignoring everything else for it.
Sometimes, I truly think the ultimate point of being human, or charitable, or compassionate is missed. This isn’t something you can schedule as a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or annual thing. The “logic” that states any problem in any area can ever be solved, really solved, this way is just… ludicrous. Charity isn’t a donation and it isn’t a single devotion to a single cause. It isn’t even a devotion to many causes. It is a devotion to any and all causes one encounters.
Encounters. As in during your life experience. In your neighborhood. In your workplace. At your social gatherings or the coffee shop or street corner or wherever it is you are in any moment. It’s here. Now.
I won’t bore you with stories of the homeless who’ve shared my residence over the years. Nor the various stories that could only be taken as some ego-pounding foolishness. My charity isn’t even noticeable but by those who benefit from it and I refuse to let them make it “about me”. It can’t really be charity if it’s about me; it can’t be really pure and helpful if what’s driving it is some feeling I get or some puffed up sense of superiority. Or a tax deduction.
Don’t get me wrong, I am so thankful to see the outpouring of help to Haiti. I cry every night for things like Haiti and for all the other horrors that we simply never hear about… from abuses to murders to any other on a long and seemingly ever-increasing list of horrors the world or the humans in it perpetrate. But when I see this wave of aid for places like Haiti, I often wonder how many will still be thinking about it (or anything else like it) next week or next month, let alone next year?
I hate having the feeling that we are, at best, a reactionary society and culture. I hate that the ideal and idea of charity is so compartmentalized. I hate thinking that the only reason a goodly segment of the world ever does anything truly charitable is because it made the news or everyone else is doing it or there’s a tax break to be had in it.
But most of all, I hate the idea that charity so rarely comes home anymore… that the notion of caring community has been largely set to stagnation and I hate the feeling I get when I think too long on how humans can sometimes be.