I hope this blog post will inspire you to take similar action that I took this morning.
Christmas day is over and I hope you had a great Christmas celebration. In my blog post yesterday, I talked about my “disappointing” gift but today, I want to stand still for the people that don’t have a luxury life. In other words: people that don’t have a roof over their head and a good daily meal to eat.
Yesterday afternoon, before I visited family to celebrate Christmas, my wife and I were watching television and saw families that were not able to celebrate Christmas in the way we are able to.
Their children did not get a nice Christmas meal and there were no presents under the Christmas tree. Of course, they showed the sad eyes of the children.
When I looked around in our living room, the floor was covered with presents and gift wrapping paper. My defective TomTom navigation system was laying in a corner, abandoned to be returned to the manufacturer.
While visiting my family later that afternoon, I also noticed the nice gifts everybody received. Notebooks, a video camera, a Nintendo game computer and even a Sony playstation 3 were given.
I was still thinking about the poor people that were shown on television and got a guilty feeling. When I feel guilty, I want to get ride of that feeling as quick as possible so when my wife and I went home, I told my wife that there is one more gift that I want to give. She was surprised and said: “Patrick, you have given me already so many nice gifts this morning.” I explained to her that this gift was not a gift to her but to a charitable organization. My wife was surprised that those words came out of my mouth but she understood and agreed immediately.
Because it was a late evening, I decided to make a donation early next morning.
Today, after I got up, I researched on the computer for the best charitable organization. There are so many charitable organizations to choose so I found a website that was able to help me out with the selection of a good organization.
The name of the website is: Charity Navigator with web address: charitynavigator.org
This website provides ratings for thousands of charitable organizations in the world. You can search for organizations in your state and by different categories.
I choose for a homeless shelter in Portland, Maine and made my contribution. I feel good about my donation and don’t feel guilty anymore. Life is all about sharing the good life.
Please check out: charitynavigator.org and make a donation to a charitable organization of your choice.
If you need a push to make donation, please search on youtube.com under the keywords: homeless and shelter and watch some videos.
Let me know if you have guilty feeling towards people in need as well and how you handle these feelings.
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3 responses so far ↓
1 Adam Kamerer - JoyChaser.com // Dec 27, 2007 at 1:48 am
This post inspires so many difficult questions: if, for example, a positive action (the charitable donation) is as meaningful if it is produced to rid the giver of a negative emotion (guilt). On the one hand, I’m sure the recipient of the donation is glad to have it regardless of the giver’s motives. But then, if the giver is giving only to rid themselves of an unpleasantry, then is it truly a selfless act?
Hmm…very difficult thoughts indeed. I think I’ve decided that it doesn’t matter, though. Whatever the catalyst, you acted as an agent of positivity by donating, and that is a good thing. Selflessness doesn’t matter quite so much as the will to aid others, I think.
Thank you for this post, and for your contribution to society, Patrick.
2 Patrick // Dec 27, 2007 at 7:54 am
Adam,
Thank you for your response.
I thought it was a selfless act as well because I got rid of my guilty feel but before making my donation, I really took time to select the right charity organization and found some good, interesting organizations so I learned something as well.
I also believe that this is a win-win situation:
For the homeless shelter and for myself not to feel guilty.
In the post, I really wrote how I felt…
3 Adam Kamerer - JoyChaser.com // Dec 27, 2007 at 11:19 am
Maybe that’s the key to it all. Getting people to understand that a positive action is no less meaningful if it benefits the giver as well as the recipient. People are, after all, more often concerned with their own wellbeing more than that of others (which isn’t a bad thing, necessarily…it’s a natural survival reaction that we’re all born with, I think), so by using ideas of “see how this can benefit you too!” we can leverage others into performing positive acts on behalf of others.