Friday, July 13, 2007 Giving By Rene Lizada Papa's Table
SOMETIME ago while walking along the streets a boy in tattered clothes approached me. With his hand held out I knew that he was begging. I looked at him and he just stared at me. His clothes were actually rags, torn and tattered.
They were dirty. His face was grimy and there were black streaks all over. His hair seemed hard. But it was his eyes that caught me. They were expressionless, empty. He was in a different world. He looked at me but the better phrase would be he looked past through me.
It was as if I had a hole in my head and he was looking through it. The boy with the outstretched hand was begging.
Begging for money. So I dug into my pockets and fished for change. I ended up giving him about three pesos.
I placed the coins in his open hand and as the coins fell they just disappeared so quickly as the closed his hand and just left. He just turned away as if nothing had happened.
I was surprised at the reaction of the boy as he just left.
There was no thank you said. He did not even bother to look at me at least. Nothing. Just the open hand and the turning away. No thank you, walang pasasalmat man lang. And of course I was bothered by that because manners will tell us that if you are given something you at least should say thank you. But no. This boy just left. No gratitude whatsoever.
As I thought about that encounter I came to realize what giving should be. What it ought to be. And that would be giving is giving. Nothing else, nothing more. When you give, you give and we should not expect anything in return. And that is where the trouble sometimes starts. When we give we expect something in return.
When we say I love you to a person what do we expect? We want that when we say I love you, it should be reciprocated. We expect and I love you back don't we? When we give something to someone we want that that person respond in kind. I do this for you therefore you do this for me.
There are even some people who would go around and start trumpeting to others what they have done for others. But are those things in the spirit of giving? Do we give because we want something in return? Do we give because we want to be popular? Do we give because we want to be known as generous and even philanthropic?
Do we give because we want our egos to be satisfied? Sadly, to most people, the motivation for giving is an ego trip, a balm for their consciences, a justification for their inadequacies and a rationalization for their behavior.
Real giving is silence. True giving is sharing without expecting anything in return. It is giving for the sake of giving. It does not expect any reward for the act of giving is the reward itself. Real giving is true charity.
It is not after rewards or nice phrases like" he is really so generous." True giving exists for itself and nothing more. The whole idea of giving stems from the silence that it demands. When you give you are quiet and you remain quiet. You do not go around and say, "Hey, I gave this."
That is not giving. That is politics. And they are not the same. The basis for giving is selflessness while that of politics is selfishness. And true giving has nothing to do with money though a lot of people think that by giving money they ease their guilt. True giving is never material.
Real giving only happens when what you give up is precious and that would mean that in giving, it hurts you. It is only real when it hurts. When you give something that is not precious, that is not giving, that is hypocrisy. It is only giving when it hurts.
What can we give? Ultimately we give ourselves. We give our time to those who need it, we give our thoughts to those who are confused, we give our hands to those who have fallen, we give our hearts to those who are lost. We give our prayers to those who are hurting.
Sometimes when I am driving and I get stuck in an intersection I stare outside at the children who are begging. I look into their eyes and I wonder what their world is like. It is so easy to dismiss them as nuisances as we sit in the comfort of our vehicles. It is comfortable in our cars and in our world. But think for a moment what world it is like for those who beg in the streets.
What kind of world it is for them who stand in the rain and withstand the heat? Sometimes I think of that boy who approached me with an open begging hand. I think about him and ask, was it really money that he wanted? Was it really money that I wanted to give?
