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.