[a letter to a friend in response to: "a question of kindness" and a gift of three dollars.]
A question about kindness?
This answer starts with a mustache, and ends with a check.
I wanted to shave my mustache since last November. I kept it through to Halloween so that I could be Luigi, but then I was ready to be done with it. In November, I participated in National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo), and when I told my roommate I was thinking about shaving, or getting my friends to chop it off me, he suggested doing a donation event.
Perfect, I thought. I could help out nanowrimo, and ceremoniously lose the stache at the same time.
Unfortunately, I overestimated my energy reserves, as it took everything I had to finish nanowrimo, and I ended November fully mustachioed. I also fell back in love with it, when I started thinking about life without it.
Then the earthquake hit Haiti, and suddenly I had a perfect candidate for the fundraiser. Not that there's a lack of causes needing funds, on the contrary, the sheer magnitude of worthy needs in the world is overwhelming. It's a floodgate that I choose not to fully open. I realize my ability to help others is finite, so I need to choose my battles. I wanted to fundraise for something that I have a connection with. And that's where it gets complicated.
I remember when the Indonesian tsunami hit. It was devastating, and I certainly felt an intense empathy when I saw photos of the people it affected, but I wasn't really connected to it. I felt the same when Hurricane Katrina took out New Orleans. It was horriffic, and images from it made me tear up, but it was more like a terrible pornography than it was a disaster that had happened to my neighbors. I still did not feel connected to it.
For most of my life, I've been connected to very little, though my few connections were intense. Most others just passed by like scenery on a train.
When Haiti was struck, I already had a connection with it. Someone that I loved had been there for a short time the previous summer, and it was an intense experience for her. She painted a vivid picture for me of her experience there.
The earthquake hit on a Tuesday, but I didn't realize what had happened until that Thursday. The destruction was incredibly complete, and the information, and lack of information, coming from the country was astounding in the brutality it described. It was easy to feel a desire to help. I wonder about that desire though. My sense of humanity gave me the ability to find compassion for what had happened, but how did I get there?
Would I have still felt a stronger connection to this disaster than the others I've named here if I hadn't loved somebody that had a strong connection to the area?
Probably, but not as much as I did feel.
Am I feeling more connected to the tragedy because I'm more connected to the world than I used to be?
Yes.
Do I need a cheerleader to personally encourage me to take some of the sorrows of the world into my heart?
Sometimes. It sure didn't hurt.
Is my world smaller, and am I selfish, for extending the most compassion to those in my daily life, and mostly excluding the far off, and far away?
Not in a meaningful way. I find my meaning in the interactions I have on a daily basis, and that determines everything else for me. As long as I'm not holding back from what I'm doing right here, right now, then I won't fault myself if things happening far away don't enter my awareness.
So it happened that I put together a small party to cut off my mustache, and contribute a little money to help in Haiti. I hadn't mailed the check yet, when I received your mailing with the three dollars in it, but it was easy to decide what to do with the money.
