Under the headline “Encountering a fellow human in need — and simply giving,” a letter from Paul Goldberg of Arlington was published Dec. 30 by The Boston Globe. It is republished with the author’s permission.
Roland Merullo’s Dec. 24 op-ed, “On giving and not giving,” captures one aspect of what it means to be human. Wrestling with the virtue of generosity is a universal phenomenon, and it raises significant issues.
Merullo asks: Will giving away my money diminish my own pleasure and happiness? He recognizes that for him, the answer is that it would not.
Others may wonder whether the money they give to a stranger will end up in, say, purchases of drugs, alcohol or tobacco products or, rather, will be used to allay suffering from hunger or cold or provide relief from a crisis, such as a need for the means to get back home.
We need to temper our judgment of worthiness or unworthiness and surrender to not knowing the life circumstances, personal traits or genetic endowment that brought an individual to the present moment.
What we do know is that we are encountering a fellow human being in need. We can choose to acknowledge that need or avert our attention, to relate not out of pity but rather out of our sense of common humanity.
A reflexive “yes” to the request from the man on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota who wanted to sell Merullo a dream catcher, rather than the reflexive “no” that haunted Merullo afterward, would come from that place of surrender and generosity.
The one statement in this fine piece I would disagree with is Merullo’s assertion that a subsequent experience of giving away money on a trip down the East Coast with his wife “changed no lives.” Perhaps so in a grandiose, transformative way, but by touching so many people with acts of kindness, he and his wife no doubt uplifted their sense of connection to other human beings.
Who knows whether that connection had a ripple effect? There is a Buddhist proverb:
“If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path.”
Clearly, Merullo has become a wiser and more compassionate person by his experiment in generosity.
This letter was published Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024.
