in opening your heart as much as you feel comfortable and giving exactly as much as you want. It's about paying attention and noticing how you feel when you give, when it feels good and when it doesn't. Noticing the effects on your life and then choosing to do more of what makes you feel good.
I've come to understand that generosity is both a feeling—of fullness, of expansion, of joy—and a choice. The more we make the choice, the more we experience the feeling. This book charts a journey through attitudes and behaviors that I hope will allow you to open your heart more easily and frequently.
I am not setting myself up as an expert. If you met me, I don't think you'd be particularly struck by my generosity. Regard me as a fellow seeker on the path, a person who has often been quite fearful and stingy but who wants to change. Recently I read a novel about a girl with “a heart so clear you could see all the way through it.” That's how openhearted I want to be. I've seen, and even tasted a bit for myself, the peace, joy, and sense of contentment that the giving heart can offer, and I want us all to share in more of that contentment.
I'm convinced that we are here on Earth to grow our souls, to open wider, to reach higher, and to stretch farther. Our goal is to soften where we would normally constrict, to loosen when we would habitually tighten, and to extend where we would usually hold back. Each and every one of us has so much to offer, and the world needs what we have to give.
2
The Gifts of Giving
About all let us never forget that an actof goodness is an act of happiness
—COUNT MAURICE MAETERLINCK
We begin by examining the bounty generosity can bring us whenever we open our hearts to another being. Understanding the rewards we will reap may motivate us to cultivate our own gifts and offer them wholeheartedly to the world. As we discover the grace that comes of giving, we begin to experience generosity as a natural upwelling of the heart that exists in each of us, and as a limitless treasure that can bring us immeasurable delight.
Giving Is a Great Mood Elevator
No joy can equal the joy of serving others.
—SAI BABA
It was one of those no-good rotten days in which nothing was going right for me. I had been up half the night with my daughter Ana, my computer kept crashing, and I got ten phone calls that distracted me from my writing. When I picked Ana up from preschool, I was in a less than stellar mood. I popped her into the car, and, still grumbling to myself, we headed for the grocery store.
At the store, the line seemed interminable. Finally I was the next one up, but it was still taking forever. Despite my annoyance, I tuned in to what was happening. The young woman in front of me kept asking the cashier to give her the total after each item. She had a tiny baby in her cart, and it was clear she didn't have enough money to pay for all the food she bought, so she went off to make a phone call, presumably to ask someone for money.
While she was gone, I asked the cashier to total up everything and tell her that she had enough money. I would make up the difference when she left. The cashier asked me if I knew her—I didn't—and then if I were wealthy. “Yes,” I replied, thinking of my beautiful daughter, the roof over my head, and the privilege of doing work that I loved.
When I left the store, I realized I was singing along with the radio and feeling remarkably good. The best part of the situation was that the woman never realized what I had done. A bit puzzled, she had gladly wheeled her cart away. I smiled to myself. Reaching out to her had reset my mood, and I felt like I was in love with the whole world.
Helping others really is like a “feel good” pill. When I was doing the research for my last book, 365 Health and Happiness Boosters, I realized that making someone else happy creates happiness the fastest. Lending a hand, making someone smile, or being of use to someone other than ourselves helps us stop focusing solely on our own difficulties and gives a larger perspective to our days. This is what Karl Marx meant when he said, “Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy.”
Giving Can Heal
There is a wonderful, mystical law of nature thatthe three things we crave most in life—happiness, freedom,and peace of mind—are always attainedby giving them to someone else.
—ANONYMOUS
During the break-up of a fourteen-year relationship, I was in terrible pain and leaned heavily on the love and advice of my friends, including author Daphne Rose Kingma, who flew up from Santa Barbara to sit with me for a few days. When she was about to leave, she gave me a tiny piece of paper, her prescription for my healing: (1) Go to therapy; (2) Meditate; (3) Reach out to others in pain.
I'm glad to say I did all three items. At the time, though, I didn't see why helping others would help me. I understood the benefits of therapy—working through the grief, coming to see my part in the break-up, and understanding the relationship dynamics I tend to encounter. I saw how meditation might work—tapping into the sense of peacefulness and wholeness beneath the pain of my situation. But giving to others? Wasn't this a time to focus on myself?
Once I began to volunteer at a “Meals on Wheels” organization for people with AIDS, I learned that giving to others was also a way to help myself. Helping others forced me to notice something other than my own misery, which was a great gift. Rather than wallowing in all the ways I had been mistreated and abused, I could turn my attention to someone else. As months passed, however, I discovered something else. Walking the halls of the welfare hotel where most of my deliveries were, I stopped being so attached to my particular wound and began to see that suffering is part of life. All kinds of terrible things happen to people, often for no reason, and I was not specially singled out for victimization.
While it wasn't true for me in this situation, giving when you are feeling hurt often makes meaning out of your suffering. The person who's paralyzed by a gunshot wound and then becomes an advocate for gun control, the woman who finally escapes from her abusive husband and works to set up a shelter for battered women—these are individuals who reach up out of the particulars of their individual tragedies to ensure that others will not have to suffer the same fate.
You don't have to be suffering from some specific hurt to reap the benefits of giving. Any time we reach out to others—in our hurt or with our love—we feel better.
Giving Is Good for Our Health
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Ihave a friend who has had a terrible case of lupus for nearly twenty years. She has been hospitalized many times and is constantly on medication that has horrible side effects, including cataracts. She had to quit her job as a graphic designer and now is completely supported by her husband. She can get really down about her life. Recently she decided to become a volunteer at a soup kitchen. She goes when she feels up to it, and she's started to discover that the more she goes, the better she feels—emotionally and physically. Her arthritis (a consequence of lupus) isn't as severe and she has more energy.
Helping others can not only make us feel good about ourselves; it can also increase our physical well-being. The mind and body aren't separate. Anything we do to elevate our spirits will also have a beneficial effect on our health. A recent study by Cornell University found that volunteering
