Fear and Loathing in Overland Park pt 49

Charity and what it really means

“Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins.”

-Horace Mann

Do you ever sit and hate people who tell you all about the glorious things that they do for other people?

Do you ever wonder why these people feel it is necessary to let you in on all of the awesome things they’ve done to help other people?

Do you ever sit and think, hey, maybe charity and anonymous donations of money, blood, or whatever it is, is meant to be kept anonymous?

In my mind, when a person feels the need to tell me that they’ve voted, given blood, sent a $5000 check to their favorite charitable organization, it makes me wonder.

What the hell is wrong with you?

And why should I care?

People seem to think that doing something charitable should do more than make them feel good on the inside. They think each and every one of us should pat them on the back.

So they wear stickers and buttons and big grins on their face like shit-eating grins advising you that they know they’re better than you because they did something amazing and gave to someone less fortunate and you didn’t.

These people are scum.

“Boards of public charity were invented by the devil to prevent real individual charity.”

-Austin O’Malley

I have a group of friends going to Mexico that are looking for donations to their travel fund because they are poor, and they know I’m poor, so they don’t expect me to give them money to assist in their travels.

They know that I’m currently moving.

But people, when someone says no, they aren’t capable of assisting you with something, why hound them? Does that make them want to be charitable?

I ask this question as the Company is currently having a Blood Fair this week. It seems everyone and their mother is.

I have a problem with giving blood, which I will get to later. And it has nothing to do with fear of needles or anything of that nature. It also has nothing to do with communicable disease.

The problem I have with people assisting in charitable functions and getting their faces out there is that at the Company, those people seem to be lurking around every corner, waiting to pounce on you as you make your way to the cafeteria or the breakroom or just stepping foot in the office.

It seems a little ridiculous.

Yes blood is needed. Yes charity is needed to give the blood to people.

But you getting in my face and telling me if I don’t that it means I’m scum and that you are better than me, you better get out of my face before I come back with a roundhouse kick to your head from the years of karate I’ve taken plus all the pent-up rage that still is encased within me from working at this Company.

“They take the paper and they read the headlines, so they’ve heard of unemployment and they’ve heard of bread lines, and they philanthropically cure them all by setting up a costume charity ball.”

-Ogden Nash

Does any of this make sense? Does it make sense to anyone to have a pub Crawl for the Cure? All that does is create liver disease as opposed to whatever form of cancer they are fighting against that week. Not to mention when said pub crawlers pass out on the streets of Westport/Power and Light they will then get skin cancer from the harmful UV-rays they did not protect themselves from.

Does charity make sense when it involves smacking someone in the face with your enormous wealth and making their poor disposition or lesser grasp on life look even worse?

What is the point?

And now for the reason why I haven’t given blood in a long long time.

The last two times I gave blood, in a fairly short period of time, one was for a blood drive and the other was at a doctor’s office.

Both times my arm came out covered in blood.

The first instance the phlebotomist could not find a vein and poked and poked and poked and poked and poked about 10 times and finally found a vein. Then, after that fiasco and being bruised and beaten, when she YANKED the needle from my arm, the blood just nicely flowed in red in a steady drip down my arm to the floor.

That was a swell day.

At the doctor’s office it was more poke and yank and then blood ruined a favorite t-shirt. So a lot of memories of needles.

And isn’t this me talking about my charity?

No it is not.

It’s me suggesting why you should stop bothering me with your call to be charitable. I can be charitable in other ways without giving my blood away.

“Charity isn’t a good substitute for justice.”

-Jonathon Kozol

My charity comes in many different ways. But first thing’s first:

I think the idea of asking if someone will sign up to give blood and then rewarding them with Royals tickets can be a good idea. It seems to work, it seems less influenced by personal ideas of needing to look like you’re a charitable human being and therefore better than someone else, and it allows you to win something.

So you’re not doing it so much for yourself, but more to see the Royals get beat. Again.

But like the man said, charity isn’t a good substitute for justice. Can we really expect people to change just by smiling at them and giving them the chance to be better without actually expelling justice?

Is this all just a nice way of telling you that charity doesn’t have to mean giving money to someone?

If you search Wikipedia regarding charity, the first thing you’re asked is to donate to them so that they can provide you with all the glorious free content at your fingertips. Could be a worthy charity, but again, I’m not made of money and I like free stuff, so I’ll just keep getting the free stuff.

Charity is the practice of benevolent givings, according to said Wikipedia. It does not state that you have to pay money. It does not say that you have to give blood.

It does not say that you need to do anything drastic to change your life so that someone else can benefit while you lose your lease on life.

Charity is all the small things we do for people.

“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature.”

-Chuang Tzu

Charity can be as small as a smile or as big as giving away a kidney.

It can be as small as a wink and as big as giving millions of dollars to a homeless person who needs it more than you.

Charity can be going to a food kitchen. It can be reading to an elderly person in an assisted living community. It can be food drives. UNICEF. Adopting a child from a foreign nation where they might not survive.

Charity comes in all forms.

And you don’t have to proclaim what you’ve done for other people to make it meaningful.

If that is why you do something nice for someone, why do it anyways? What’s the point?

To make yourself feel better about an emptiness you feel?

If that is why you’re being charitable, then it’s time to stop. It’s time to try something else.

Like alcohol or pills.

I mentioned previously that flexirol is changing my habits. It seems to be changing my brain patterns as well. That cottonmouth has gone insane and my back feels a slight bit better.

Not immense changes. But enough to notice.

And my wife did something charitable in getting me to go to the doctor. As I’ve mentioned before, I hate doctors. Hate going to see them time and time again and them tell me nothing is wrong with my constant back pain and they have nothing to do but hope for the best.

By forcing me to go to the doctor, she was charitable and came back with a reward of her own.

I don’t complain as much about the insomnia.

“Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.”

-Albert Camus

You see, the whole let’s change the world thing, hippie love-in message I’ve been proclaiming since the first day, it’s boiled down to generosity and charity.

It’s boiled down to doing the right thing on a daily basis and making things look better and feel better.

It’s not that hard to give away some of the hate in your heart so that someone else can smile when they need to.

It’s not that hard to go from clinically depressed to bright and bubbly if someone needs you to be strong for them.

It’s easy.

It’s easy to be generous and giving. It really is.

But it’s even easier to talk about it and pat yourself on the back.

So that’s the ticket right there. This idea, this changing of the world that we all seem so much to want, it depends on that.

It depends on doing the right thing and helping your brothers and sisters and not patting yourself on the back. Not proclaiming how great you are.

It’s not about you anymore.

It’s about everyone else.

When you really truly realize how heavy the entire world is, there’s a part of your mind that just has to accept that you will never fix or change everything. You have to accept that there are people who feel the need to always say how great they are because they voted and they want you to know so that you can tell them how great they are for saying and doing just that.

But that’s not the issue.

The point and the issue is: to change the world, to embrace this Or that surrounds us, the choice starts within each and every one of us. We have to accept that we must be generous and charitable to others and not expect something in return.

That is not what charity is all about.

It’s not about what you get in return.

It’s about helping someone else.

So this is my way of helping all of you. Open your eyes and look around you. Do you like what you see? Do you want something to change?

Then it’s time for a change. But it’s on you. If you want to be better and do something better with yourself, or you know someone that does and needs to be pushed, it’s time to push and it’s time to start.

The choice is yours.

This world will change with each and every one of us.

We just have to remember the basic principle of charity: doing good things and not doing it for ourselves. We are doing it to better everything around us, and we don’t need anyone’s approval to do it.

“What do you call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, magnanimity, forgiveness? Different results of the one master impulse: the necessity of securing one’s self-approval.”

-Mark Twain