We hear a lot of people make general statements to the effect that it important to give back to society. And we fundamentally agree with this; giving up time to worthy causes such as charitable initiatives can make a huge difference, be immensely StressBusting™ and be extremely gratifying in the process.
We therefore thought we would use one of the best modern definitions of "charity" we have come across as a basis for this post.
It defines "charity" as:-
"the private or public relief of unfortunate or needy people; benevolence. The most common connotations are love, kindness, and affection with some notion of generous or spontaneous goodness."
Speaking to a lot of successful businesspeople as we are privileged to do within the context of this excellent definition, one thing we hear repeatedly is that, to get to the point where they were able to give as "generously and spontaneously" to charity as they do, in terms of time as well as financial contribution, they have had to be very committed to their own interests during the course of their business activities, sometimes to the point of having been considered mercenary.
This seeming contradiction that one has to be "mercenary first to then become a missionary" at first appears difficult to reconcile; but broken down to its bare bones, it translates simply to mean that in order to effectively, meaningfully and perhaps most importantly, unconditionally, do good for others on a major scale, you need to be in a relatively good place yourself.
A businessperson who attends many charitable functions in support of their causes but predominately to raise their own profile and who cannot contribute financially is obviously to some degree less valuable to the charity's causes than one who attends and contributes financially. In the case of the financial contributors, their personal commitment to their own business success, resulting in greater personal financial security and freedom, is what enables them to contribute their time and expenditure "generously and spontaneously", for the purpose of the above definition. An attention to self interest, in others words, has created a window for them to invest in others less fortunate or more in need.
Similarly, a person who volunteers for a Samaritans telephone helpline who has current unaddressed issues of their own in the hope it makes them feel better, may not be as valuable as a person who has had first hand experience of those relevant issues themselves but addressed them in the appropriate manner.
Put another way, formal charitable involvement per se ought not to be used as a form of personal gratification or simply as a shield or distraction from personal issues; to use charities in this way does an injustice to the important role they play and causes they support on often limited resources; while it may make a person feel a little more buoyant about themselves in the short term, it is unlikely in the long term to get the heart of any unaddressed issues they might be facing personally (as opposed to, for example, approaching a relevant charity capable of assisting them in their own right). See our post entitled "The Dangers of Denial to StressBusting™" for a further exploration of this.
Or put another way, being "seen to be charitable" is not the same as being so; instead, we can all do well to recognise and act on the fact that we can make an incredible difference to other people's lives day in and day out, without cost or reward, by the way we act and behave towards them in passing, which can "generously and spontaneously" promote wellness and collegiatism throughout society, a fact to which our post entitled "Stressbusting™ Lessons from Finland - “The Happiest Nation on Earth”" attests.
Charity in this regard does, truly, start@home.
Biglove,
MikeyM™&LouLoU™ 😊😍😎🧡💛💕 xxxx