Why We Give/Why We Care
It's Sunday, the ComedySportz theater is dark and quiet except for the stupid Christmas music streaming. I am sitting here getting press releases sent out and decorating the collection box for the ComedySportz Food Drive that I've organized for four years (side note: http://tinyurl.com/CSZfooddrive). Yesterday I went out to the Join the Impact rally at the Hennepin County Government Center to support gay marriage rights. These two activities, rubbing together in my brain, are making me think about why we give, why we care; what drives us to do what we do that is not essential for our own physical survival but is instead for what we perceive to be the greater good.
Specifically, it's making me think of my grandmother. She was a tiny woman, but the family called her "Little Napoleon" because she had a commanding nature. I remember seeing her on television protesting the invasion of Honduras in 1988. Of course the news crews chose to interview the little old lady in the red beret - an unlikely face in the crowd, but a life-long advocate for peace with a grandson in the 82nd Airborne about to be shipped out.
A child of the Great Depression, she cared deeply about hunger. Somehow, by example, she instilled in me a passion for ending hunger whenever possible. I think of her as I haul clumsy cartloads of food down 31st street to the Joyce Food Shelf, and I thought of her yesterday as we huddled in the government plaza, chanting and cheering.
Is this why most of us give and care, someone showed us how to? Probably many of us are looking forward at the children around us, trying to make the world a place for them to live. Probably some of us have gone through hard times ourselves and want for no one else to ever suffer as we have. Some of us probably answer a voice from the universe that says it must be so.
Why do you give? Why do you care? What makes your better nature sometimes take the wheel?
Specifically, it's making me think of my grandmother. She was a tiny woman, but the family called her "Little Napoleon" because she had a commanding nature. I remember seeing her on television protesting the invasion of Honduras in 1988. Of course the news crews chose to interview the little old lady in the red beret - an unlikely face in the crowd, but a life-long advocate for peace with a grandson in the 82nd Airborne about to be shipped out.
A child of the Great Depression, she cared deeply about hunger. Somehow, by example, she instilled in me a passion for ending hunger whenever possible. I think of her as I haul clumsy cartloads of food down 31st street to the Joyce Food Shelf, and I thought of her yesterday as we huddled in the government plaza, chanting and cheering.
Is this why most of us give and care, someone showed us how to? Probably many of us are looking forward at the children around us, trying to make the world a place for them to live. Probably some of us have gone through hard times ourselves and want for no one else to ever suffer as we have. Some of us probably answer a voice from the universe that says it must be so.
Why do you give? Why do you care? What makes your better nature sometimes take the wheel?