Day 5 - Give permission to others to give

Day 5

The Gift: A five dollar contribution to Camp Foster trading post.

Today offered the first cash opportunity to give and it was fun and spontaneous. We took our youngest daughter to summer camp and were depositing money into her “trading account” for her to spend during the week. We had planned to deposit fifteen dollars and I only had twenty dollar bills. I handed the counselor a twenty dollar bill and asked her to put the difference on a child’s account who had no other means. Her surprised thank you and pleasant smile were kind, and certainly worth more to me than the five dollars that I can’t imagine spending in any other way. Shannon got to witness the act (although I was very discrete) and I could see her take a deep breath of pride. That simple gift of five dollars established her in her mind as coming from a giving family and set a standard for her to live up to. While she was at camp she told me later that she gave half of her postage stamps to some of the girls in her cabin who wanted to send a letter home and forgot stamps. No-receipt cash transactions - probably not a smart accounting move, but an infinitely solid giving opportunity.

❦ Setting a standard of giving provides others with permission to give.

Day 4 - ❦ Give when the time is right

Day 4

The Gift(s): 1 bag of wild rice to our out-going exchange student and a commemorative US quarters collectors book for an exchange student who is visiting for the summer.

Well, today is day four and the first weekend of this exercise. Now the challenge begins. I wake up knowing that I am wanting (needing) to give and haven’t got a clue about what or with whom I am going to interact. While I was at the grocery store, I remember Nina, our exchange student from Denmark,  talking about how much her mother enjoyed wild rice while she was here and I decided that was it - my giving opportunity - and bought some wild rice with recipes. As we are checking out, I ran into a close friend Janet who was buying a last minute item for a lunch she was preparing for Nina and our former exchange student who stayed with us several years ago who is visiting for the summer while working as an intern at the Hormel Institute - Sevy. She invited us over to her home to have lunch. Perfect - I can give Nina the rice! But wait, several months ago, I bought a commemorative coin book for Sevy because I knew she collected the newly minted United States quarters. We swung by the house, picked up the other gift and delivered both gifts to the girls that afternoon. It was fun and felt freeing to give Sevy something that has been sitting around in anticipation of seeing her.

❦ I enjoy shopping with others in mind and giving when the time is right.

Day 3- ❦ The value is in the story

Day 3

The Gift(s): African necklace and matching skirt to our exchange student; United States & Denmark lapel pins and African suns for our exchange student and host parents.

Today, was a challenge because I had so many giving opportunities, I had to face several questions early in the day:

• Are multiple giving opportunities okay?
• Can multiple giving opportunities count against future days that may not offer as many opportunities?           
• Is it okay to count birthday gifts as part of the daily giving mission?

Because I had not established any rules or guidelines to this giving exercise (including how long I was going to try this) and given the fact that I am a rule-oriented person this entire process has been a huge leap of faith for me. I am actually surprised that it wasn’t until Day 3 that a conflict arose in my mind about multiple giving opportunities. The question created enough angst in me that I realized that I did not want to have to go through this question every time a multiple giving opportunity presented itself. The angst was derived from the fact that I knew if I created a rule that said one giving opportunity is all I am doing that I would be creating a perpetual conflict with my very core. Giving is a crucial part of my being and my purpose and to set arbitrary limits would pose many problems. Needless to say, I felt a great deal of relief when I settled upon establishing my first guideline that allows for multiple giving opportunities.

GUIDELINE # 1 - Multiple giving opportunities in one day are okay.

But because I thrive on a certain amount of angst, right away establishing Guideline #1 created new challenges regarding banking multiple giftings. Okay, probably not angst, but a little laziness slipped in. Just think how easy it would be to keep track of the multiple gifts and count them on the tough (or dry) days? And as easy as that would be, the ethical part of me decided that I needed to take the more difficult road on this one and that it might actually be fun to see what I pulled out of the air on those dry days.

GUIDELINE # 2 - Multiple giving opportunities can not be banked to be counted toward future credit.

Okay, now that I have that worked out I still need to deal with a stickler - where does giving for birthdays and other celebrations fit into the exercise? I had to go for a walk to work this out. When I was done, I landed on the concept that giving for birthdays might be okay. Now, keep in mind that I have already determined that today I have at least two other giving opportunities and do not feel pressured at this moment to really answer this question. However I answer the question will not have a net effect on the day - I will still give the birthday gift and have other opportunities to give. That being said, I know that this will continue to come up as a dilemma so I decided not to decide, but to ruminate about it and allow the gift to be included in my daily giving mission.

As it turned out, all of the gifts that were given that evening were really fun to give. Our exchange student enjoyed the African jewelry and skirt that I brought back from my recent trip to Togo and Ghana and I got to tell the story about Street Aid, a refuge for girls who live and work on the streets with their babies who are learning a new trade like batiking, sewing, making jewelry where I had purchased the skirt and necklace as a means of supporting their efforts. It was fun to give a thank you gift to the host families who had hosted our student with so much caring and compassion - and while a simple lapel pin may seem like a pretty cheap gift, I really used them as a means of publicly thanking each of them for their dedication and commitment to our student. I realized during this evening that I often use the gift as a means of telling a greater story or thanking someone for something far greater than a gift can possibly match in value.


❦ The value is in the story.

Day 2 - ❦ Intentional Giving is Meaningful Giving

Day 2

The Gift: One bag of men’s shoes and nice clothing to the Salvation Army.

While the Salvation Army is an old stand-by for me - an easy guilt reliever when I am feeling like I have too much in my life, this intentional method of gift giving turned the usual to an unique giving experience. Interestingly enough, the Salvation Army was also cooperating with the universe and my new found exercise of challenging myself. Now, when I say that the Salvation Army is a guilt reliever, it usually induces some guilt when I drop off old stuff that I probably should have thrown away. Because I was intentionally giving away items, I had carefully chosen some clothing in good condition - something that I would feel good about giving away and prepared to take them to the Salvation Army to complete day two's mission.

But like the first day, it was to be an unusual giving experience. Our Salvation Army receives tons and tons of stuff daily - so much so that they often have to close so that volunteers can sort through all of the stuff to make room for new donations. Unfortunately, much of what they receive is just junk, un-sellable and they must pay to have the garbage taken away. I am afraid that I have contributed to this problem. It is easy to do however, because you can anonymously bring things into their back room and walk away before they have an opportunity to inspect the items and tell you that you should take them back. It is also easy to justify, at least for me, because I always made sure that there was at least one nice thing in each bag and I used that justification to placate my guilt about giving my worthless trash for someone else to deal. But again, today was to be an unusual giving experience. I had carefully chosen nice items and was feeling very good about what I was giving today.

When I pulled up to the back of the Salvation Army, like I had hundreds of times before - I noticed that their usual drop-off door was locked. I drove around to the side door and there was a sign that said I needed to ring the bell for assistance. I did and a man came to the door. I handed him my bag and felt a wave of pride as he opened up the bag and looked into it, inspecting my gift. On several other occasions, I would have absolutely died of embarrassment at what I had dropped off, yet today was different. I was intentionally giving and as he looked back at me, he smiled a grateful smile and thanked me. And so it was that on day two I received the by-product of prideful giving that will help to establish the rules that I have not yet set about giving. Today raised the bar and set a standard for me regarding intentional, as opposed to mindless, giving.

❦ Intentional giving is meaningful giving.

Day 1...When I Give I Feel Light

Day 1

The Gift: A ten pound bag of IAMS hairball formula cat food

I had known for a while that I wanted to give this bag of cat food away. I accidently bought it one day many months ago and after the first bowl realized that our two cats just didn’t care for it. Now I am a person who struggles to throw anything away, especially something I have just purchased so the bag of cat food has just been sitting around annoying me. I loaded it into my car and it sat there for weeks because I just didn’t ever get out to the shelter. I had lost touch with the times that our local shelter was open since it was run entirely by volunteers and there just never seemed like a convenient time to go. So on this, my first day of giving, I decided to just bite the bullet and drive the extra mile to go out to the shelter to see if it was open. As I approached the parking lot I noticed that my heart was beating loudly and I was a little nervous, questions were racing through my mind:

• What if there is no one there to accept my gift?
• What if this is not the type of cat food they feed their cats?
• What if this is not good enough?
• Will they tell me that my gift is no good, too old, not enough?
• What if they mock me and my gift?

While they may seem like pretty silly questions and concerns - they were all there and more -  I realized why I had not yet dropped off the cat food and was wondering if fulfilling my daily gift exercise should have been something more meaningful (or easier). But then, another question popped into my brain:

• If I don’t give this today, what is my alternative gift?

That was the question that turned the tide - I did not have a back-up plan yet so it had to be this. Relief flashed through me as I noticed that there were no cars in the parking lot - I was going to be taken off the hook and not have to face all of my underlying fears. But alas, in a shady corner near the front door was a little girl sitting cross-legged on a table with her bike balanced on the wall next to her. I got out with the big orange bag of cat food and asked her if she was waiting for a ride - again thinking that since they had just closed, I would have to do this another day and would get relief from my fears right now. She told me that she was waiting for them to open and since she rides her bike out to the shelter on the day she works she tends to be early, so she was just sitting in the shade - waiting.

I handed the girl the bag and asked her to give it to the Director when the shelter opened. She received my gift, smiled and said “okay, thank you”.  I walked away thinking about what the scene would look like when this little girl presented the Director with ten pounds of cat food. My first gift was to be received more than once. That little girl willingly, opening, gratefully, and thankfully accepted my gift and all of my concerns were abated. I felt light, happy and like I accomplished more than just giving away some old cat food. My first day of giving was a success.

❦ When I give, I feel light.

Introduction to 100 Days of Giving...An Exercise in Hope

Introduction

I always believed that I would be the best person to win the lottery. Not just the ten million dollar lottery - the really big one - sixty million, one hundred million or so. And not for the obvious reasons - although paying off all of my bills would feel pretty good. No, I am the best person to win the lottery, the really big one, because I love to give. I was born to give. My fantasies about winning the lottery are the car payments I would make for my family, the food I would buy to fill the food shelf, the foundation I would create and head to provide funding for micro-lending and sustainable industry and agriculture projects, the schools I would build in Africa, the budding artists I would support through their starving days, the community theatre I would patronize... the list goes on and on.

Interspersed in those fantasies are the visions of helping my husband fulfill his dream of spending an entire winter on the ice fishing, my children becoming world humanitarians and every once in a while - the thought of me walking on the beach in Hawaii comes through just to ground me. I am ninety-five percent altruistic and the rest is selfish. I am accustomed to writing off the guilt about being selfish by reminding myself that I have to give to myself in order for me to have anything to give to others. And so I ended up here - in this new giving experience. And an exercise that was designed to help me get out of a dark slump has challenged me in ways I never thought possible and has given me more than I dreamed. I would get from winning the lottery - the really big one.

I was born with the life mission “To Serve, Create, and Bring Joy”. You may not believe in life missions but I do. Every time I take the opportunity to check in with what I am about, in answer to why I am here, this mission statement comes pouring out, “To Serve, Create, and Bring Joy”. It does not matter whether I do the visioning exercise in a facilitated group, individually while meditating, in a business meeting, or while showering (my best thinking time) - it is always the same, “To Serve, Create, and Bring Joy”. I hear that mission in words, in song, in male and female voices, I see the words, I taste the words and understand the words down to my core. When I choose not to pay attention to those words and stray from my mission with that deep understanding, my heart hurts.

When my heart hurts, it really hurts. Not in a way like I am having a heart attack, but with a heavy, pain soaked, hard to breath, unyielding, weighty, and formidable pressure that takes my breath away slowly. It is a distinctive pain that appears whenever my core purpose is challenged or ignored. When my heart begins to hurt, I can usually shake it off pretty quickly by adding movement to my life - breathing, running, writing, finishing a project that has been bugging me, by doing whatever it was that had me stuck and the pain passes, the pain simply sneaks away. But this time it was different. This time it just wouldn't go away. This time the heavy darkness that surrounds my heart when it hurts spilled out into my body and seeped into my very being. My pores, blood vessels, and brain were filled with this heavy darkness which obscured my every moment.

In part I owe this pain to Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil McGraw is a television psychologist who “gets real” with people. He lays it on out the line and asks questions like, “How’s that working for ya?”. I am a big Dr. Phil fan. I often thought that I would make a terrible psychologist because I would be way too directive and just lay my opinions out on the table, instead of employing subtlety and metaphors into my craft. And so, I am not a psychologist, but I think if I had become one, I would be like Dr. Phil.

Several years ago Dr. Phil was waging a war on fat. I love his fat shows and last year taped his show every Monday so I could follow the thirteen fat people that he was helping with lifestyle changes. I loved watching the concepts of “no fail environments” and “dealing with toxic relationships” playing out right in front of me with real people that I could relate to - or kind of relate to. Although I have become rather complacent with my life since moving from Boulder, Colorado to the Midwest and have gained a significant amount of weight - I was still not as fat at the people on the fat shows.

Our move from Boulder is one that my husband and I revisit many times in a year. We do not revisit it in regret but to remind ourselves about how we make decisions when we are following our mission, following our right livelihood.  To remind ourselves that we have made decisions that on the outside seem daunting but within ourselves felt like the only sane, clear choice. When we talk about the decision to move we talk about that stream of energy that swept us up and everything in the universe streamed in the direction of the Midwest making it impossible not to get on that wave of movement and ride it home, ride it to our next adventure, follow it to our purpose. While this may sound rather metaphysical (and probably is), it is also very physical. Thinking back on it I visualize doors banging open to ensure that we were going in the right direction. Every time a barrier or challenge to the move came up - doors banged open from hallways previously unnoticed and we were swept though those doors into the light, toward our purpose - toward what we were supposed to do.

I mention this wave of purpose, or the energy that drives me when I am in line with my core mission because when I stray from my purpose for an extended period of time it feels like this wave of energy is pushing against me - fighting me, crushing me. I feel like my feet are stuck in the mud of a stream bed while the white water waves crash over me and squeezing the breath right out of my body. So how does Dr. Phil fit in this stream bed?

Well, in February, for some unknown reason both my husband and caught a small clip of the Dr. Phil fat show. I still can not explain why we were both at home at that moment, because we would both normally be at work and I would be taping the show. But here we were watching it. During the show Dr. Phil introduced his “Booty Camp” for people who wanted to lose about twenty-five pounds and unveiled his new book that outlined how we could do just that. Stan and I jumped at the opportunity. I went right out and bought the book and on the following Sunday we began the “Dr. Phil Plan”. We loved it, we loved having a common family goal and we loved the results we got. The lifestyle changes we made were easy for us because they moved us more in line with the lifestyle we had led for a long time prior to moving here. Three months later we had both lost over twenty-five pounds each, were exercising regularly, doing yoga and had dropped eight sizes between both of us.

Although I was feeling physically better than I have in years, I was feeling a growing sense of unease. I felt raw and vulnerable, no longer protected by my fat, no longer able to use my weight or lack of physical well-being as an excuse. The darkness crept in. The suffocation of energy pressed against me and clogged my throat. And, the assault of the non-profit industry by the political leaders of the state in which I live intensified.

Each morning I woke up in darkness, unable to breath, reluctant to face the day, unwilling to endure yet another assault to my psyche. When it got so bad, I just stayed in bed. After several days I realized that I needed to do something, I had to figure out a reason to get up and out of bed, I had to get back in touch with my core mission - “To Serve, Create and Bring Joy”. But how could I do this when I felt empty, dark and filled with scarcity?

I appealed to the universe to help me find an answer to my angst. Although I would like to say that the answer came to me like a lightening bolt, it more settled in like an awakening of what I needed to do. A light shined in the dark hallways of my mind and I new what I needed to do. I needed to give. Nothing more, nothing less. Simply give. I asked no questions, I had no rules, I just knew that everyday I needed to wake up, get out of bed, and give.

That was the beginning of this incredible adventure which lasted three months. During this adventure I have given and received more than I ever thought possible. I began journaling about my experiences and got as much from the writing process as the giving.  “Simple Gifts” was birthed.

Prologue...Simple Gifts

Prologue

Simple Gifts

When I started this exercise, the motives were somewhat selfish. I needed a focus, a reason to get up in the morning, a reason to look forward to each day. Waking up to giving seemed like a good idea. I had no idea how hard it was going to be, what challenges the exercise would offer, or what the “rules” would be. I just knew that if I set as a goal to give something each day I would have something else on which to  to spend my energy  - instead of ruminating about the scarcity in my life, or the fear of losing my job. I also had absolutely no idea of what I would get back in return, no expectations of how much would come into my life - all of the unintended consequences - both good and bad.

This is written as a personal journal, for a personal journey. What I did - anyone can do and I believe that the rewards can be as great, if not greater. The things I chose to give are everyday common gifts and did not cost very much  - if anything. The true value was in the timing, the method of giving, and the recipient. The unexpected value to me was that I got my life back from out of the darkness - your rewards may be very different. What I do know is that implementing an intentional act of giving into your daily life will inspire you, provide hope, and disburse caring into a world that so desperately needs love.