The Abundance Paradox: the Power of Doing Good and Feeling Good
Humanity has come to the end of a path and we stare into the woods. Our next moves will require new ways of thinking and being. Where will we find them?
In 2013 I worked for a program for youth who had “aged out” of the foster care system. In other words they were too old to get free care and ostensibly nobody wanted them.
Through the SHINE program these kids could get housing, counseling, educational and livelihoods support in one place. They would live with a community of other kids like them. Out of hundreds of applicants only 8 could be accepted— a handful of young people were given one thin chance to play the hand life dealt them.
- pause. breathe. why is this even necessary? why can’t we take care of children? have we grown to accept this as “normal” ?
The chosen 8 were inner city kids from the resource poor region around Springfield, Massachusetts — at the time rated the 6th most violent city in the US. A typical rust belt city, Springfield was characterized by economic decline and the “white flight’ in which affluent people moved to the suburbs. These kids were the progeny of those who couldn’t or didn’t flee. They were scrappy, smart survivors.
I wanted to do a fundraiser for them— to bring attention to their stories and raise money for little things they needed like drivers permits, clothes for job interviews, school books, vitamins, bus passes, familiar comfort food.
I went to talk with them. Little did I know - these kids were about to school me.
“We’ve been thinking about it and we all agree — we want to spend 3 hours a week going door to door asking for coats and canned food,” shared one young man who wanted to be a fashion designer.
I was perplexed. “Oh, okay. Do you need more coats and canned food?”
“We want to donate them to the HIV/AIDS clinic up the street.” He said, and then:
“Just because we don’t have much doesn’t mean we don’t have something to give.”
“We’ve been given to so much, we want to be the givers now.” said Crystal, who found herself in foster care at 16 after her grandmother — who had been her primary caregiver — passed away suddenly from cancer.
“We know people who have less than us and we want to do something to help them.” said a 20-years-young man with just a few months before he would be too old for SHINE.
Now I was floored. These youth, living in subsidized housing and fresh out of homelessness, wanted to raise money for others. Not themselves.
In my work I have quality time with people of comfortable means, processing and working through the brave decision to part with a small percentage of their wealth.
But for these youth — who had no money at all — generosity seemed like a gift to behold.
Where did these kids get their ingrained sense of generosity and selflessness?
They are connected to something we have lost touch with. There is a freedom, a liberation in being able to give. We have been hoodwinked to believe that giving away leads to having less. In fact, it leads to having more of what makes you feel good.
“Pleasure activism is the work we do to reclaim our whole, happy, and satisfiable selves from the impacts, delusions, and limitations of oppression and/or supremacy.” — Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: the Politics of Feeling Good
Generosity is pleasure activism for these youth — and the majority of people who make less than six figures — because it demonstrates a refusal to be a slave to money. It is refusal to step into an ideology that has caused so much pain — the lie that money leads to happiness. Brown later explains that “Excess destroys the spiritual experience of pleasure.”
I see the youth at SHINE as calling for their own liberation — to be freed from the fractured narrative of the “haves” and “have nots.”
They seek a society guided by inclusion and unconditional love. One with a capacity for both justice and forgiveness. Understanding that “having” is not solely defined by money enables us to let it go to work for our collective well-being.
“Did you know that some people are so poor, all they have is money?” — Bob Marley
In the US and in many other places where our economic system has stretched itself thin there is still a belief that money alone can make us feel good.
Today we sit in the middle of a surreal theater in the US where we see a trillion tiny rips and tears this ideology has made to our ability to be alive, liberated and in pursuit of our happiness.
In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic we literally do not have the infrastructure and resources — and in many cases the good sense — to care for our loved ones. We are exposed.
And during this time of exposure we see the basic, most natural of all impulses springing up around us. Stories of human collaboration, connection, and sharing are replacing tabloids, muck and accusations. Providing a necessary salve for our spirits.
Beyond setting us up for danger, the tired ideology has impeded one of our most powerful pleasure engines: generosity. And through the cracks of its failing we see the light streaming through again.
Brown goes on to share “Pleasure activists believe that by tapping into the potential goodness in each of us we can generate justice and liberation, growing a healing abundance where we have been socialized to believe only scarcity exists.”
While giving/tithing/collection/devotion has been a standard practice in most faith communities, we have yet to integrate them fully into our (r)evolutionary practices in a way that invokes the same rewards felt in devotion. Giving to “causes” is often a grief-ridden, guilty, or shaming experience.
- pause. breathe. What if it was not only easy, but it also felt GREAT?!
As for the SHINE youth, they went ahead and raised almost 1,000 lbs of food and coats for inner-city folks living with HIV/AIDS. You can see the vid here, (which was how I managed to raise some money for them ANYWAYS!) (p.s. — this was 7 years ago and my tech-limits are really evident)
Perhaps the meek shall, indeed, inherit the earth. What trails are being created that we have not yet explored?
Next up in this series:
2 of 4: Babes into the Woods: Agnostic Notions of Repentance and Apocalypse
3 of 4: Re:Generosity; a Model for Deep Equity Systems Change
4 of 4: Remembering the Future and Arriving Together in Joy
