GIVING MONEY OR GIVING ONESELF

If you live here in the United States you would be used to see on TV ads of different organizations asking for money.

Also, you will receive in your mail a bunch of material with stickers with your name and address to be used in the postal service, and images of flowers or animals, or the American flag, also asking to support a noble cause.

Sometimes the alternative that you are faced with is in a certain way ridiculous. Because yes, you can love pets but it is not the same to be asked 19 dollars a month for pets, than the same amount for children's hospitals or veterans of wars.

All this is permanent, besides the circumstantial requests for donations in favor of victims of a disaster be it a hurricane, an earthquake or a wildfire.

Essentially, it is the appeal to give something in favor of others. It's an appeal to solidarity and generosity. And that is good.

But I prefer to choose the best way, that is giving oneself.

Choose a person or persons and concentrate your thoughts, your effective solidarity, your concern about their lives, their problems, their health, the needs they have, help them solve problems, give them suggestions, and be in regular contact with them.

It is a specific and concrete way that makes them feel that you care for them, that they are important to you, that they matter.

Giving yourself to them make them feel that they are not alone, that they can rely and count on you.

I will call this the personalized approach to do the good.

While giving money to charities dilutes the action as one among thousands of others doing the same thing, concentrating on a person and do for that person all that you can, is the greatest engagement, one that is done with your will and your heart.

I have chosen this way of giving. 

Of course, there is also a way to giving yourself more general, reaching to more people for the benefit of them.

Every time you lead a class as a teacher, give a public lecture, participate in a broadcasted interview by radio or TV or talk with a journalist of a newspaper or a magazine, you are transferring your knowledge on something, your experience, your expertise, your thoughts and opinion.

That means talent and time dedicated to others, and that, therefore, is very important too.

Milton W. Hourcade