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How to Be Generous
论慷慨
The word "gift" has got dangerously devalued of late. Salesmen use
so-called free gifts as bait and publicists use them as bribes; the wealthy can
make "gifts" to their children, or to charities, with no more noble motive than
saving tax. And anything labelled a gift shop, or catalogue, can generally be
guaranteed to be full of curious, zany items like personalised solid silver
back-scratchers and musical ashtrays, which are only classified as "giftware"
because nobody in their senses would buy them to use themselves.
We need to claim the word back this Christmas. We also need to claim back
the word "generous": which too often gets used in the sense of over-large
portions of food, hotel towels, the size of sheets, or women spilling out of
their dresses. For generosity--the ability to make real gifts with modesty and
love, expecting nothing back--is one of the things which most make us human. You
do not find pigs or lions giving one another thoughtful little presents, do you?
Monkeys, apparently, offer one another fleas at times, but not in any provable
spirit of kindliness. We should honour generosity more than we do.
Perhaps it has become suspect because of the tales of over-the-top
generosity sometimes told in gossip about the very rich. The late Christina
Onassis giving her daughter a personal zoo and a flock of sheep with their own
shepherd, for instance; assorted tycoons flying their guests halfway round the
world for birthday parties where there is an emerald bracelet or cufflinks on
every place-setting; wealthy men paying off old girlfriends with houses, yachts
and Ferraris. In this context, generosity has come to mean that you hurl money
around like a drunken sailor. And there is always the suspicion that, like the
sailor, you are doing it just to prove that you can afford it. That is not
giving: that is showing off.
But the real thing, when you meet it, is magical, and as a quality it
belongs equally to rich and poor. Sometimes the poor--like the widow in the
Bible who gave her mite--are best at it. Travellers in remote parts, from Poland
to Peru, come home with stories of bread, shelter, even beds shared without
question with the stranger on the peasant principle that "A guest in the house
is God in the house". Nearer home, I loved the stories collected in memory of
Katie Sullivan, the 23-year-old mental home care assistant who was murdered last
year. Particularly the one about the day she was walking to the pub, and lagged
behind, and her student friends caught a glimpse of her emptying her whole purse
into a tramp's hands when she thought they weren't looking. Later in the pub
they teased her about not drinking, trying to make her admit what she had done;
but she steadfastly pretended she didn't want a drink. |
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发表于 2016-7-10 11:27:25