There are many who give money and many more who wish they could. And there is nothing wrong with that. You give what you have, and if what you have is money, then money will do.
The world is broken in many places and money is a fast way to put a finger in the dam. But there is a kind of giving that does not move so fast. It has no receipt and does not pass through a tax man’s hands. It cannot be wired or withdrawn or marked as a donation. It is older than money and far more difficult.
It is the giving of yourself. Not just your blood or your breath, though some have given that too. I mean the giving of time. Of attention. Of the full weight of your presence.
A man once told me he had given a great deal to a hospital. I asked him what that meant and he told me the number. I nodded. He said it again, a little louder. I nodded again and said I had spent six weeks there once sitting with a boy who did not make it. He asked if I were a relative. I said no. He did not ask anything after that.
There are men who spend their time as if it were ash and others who guard it like gold. But the truth is no one has enough of it, not really, and so to give it freely is no small thing.
You cannot make more of it. You cannot earn it back once it is gone. And still there are people who wake up early to drive others to appointments, who sit beside the bed when someone is dying, who stand in line to serve coffee to people who have no one left to sit across from them at breakfast.
That is giving. That is something that cannot be dropped in a box or swiped on a card.
People talk about meaning as if it were found at the end of some long road, a place you arrive at after collecting the right experiences or books or furniture. But I think it lives closer than that. I think it waits in the quiet moments when you are doing something for someone who cannot pay you back.
Money can buy comfort. It can buy efficiency. It can buy distraction, and it can even buy a kind of beauty. But it cannot sit beside you in your worst hour. It cannot hold your hand. It cannot write a letter or pick up the phone or kneel down beside a child who has dropped their ice cream. Those things take a person. And not just a person, but a willing one.
In the end, I think the ones who matter most are the ones who show up. They don’t always have a title or a clever thing to say. But they come when they are needed. And they come without a clock in their hand.
It is easy to be generous when it costs nothing. Harder when the cost is your morning, or your pride, or the comfort of your own plans.
But this is where the world is made better. Not in large acts alone, but in small ones done with great effort. A chair carried up the stairs. A conversation held patiently. A meal cooked, not ordered.
Give your money, if you have it. The world needs that too. But give your time if you dare. That is the real currency. And the poor are not the only ones in need of it.
Join us in making the world a better place – you’ll be glad that you did. Cheers friends.