underXposed

Kindness

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou

Why Kindness is So Important

Giving

Giving isn’t sexy. You won’t find news stories about it in the A section. The subject probably won’t come up at that party you’re going to this weekend. You will (I predict) click away to somewhere else instead of finishing a blog entry about giving.

Those of us living from paycheck to paycheck as well as billionaires try to avoid giving to others at all costs. The old saying “It’s more blessed to give than receive” is tarnished beyond recognition. When we’re asked to give, we back away with potent derision. “How dare they ask me to give? Let someone else give, someone who can afford it better than I can, someone who wants to be a do-gooder. Anyway, isn’t it the government’s job to take care of these people?”

We all want the Maserati in the garage, the McMansion, the Starbucks latte, and leave us the hell alone about our emptiness and isolation. The truth is, everyone fears lack, no matter who we are. Those in most need make up the untouchable class in America because neediness is the what we’re all fleeing from, caught up in the frenetic pace of commerce, the race for image and power. Work and consumption have taken over our lives. Our clogged and shrieking cities so devoid of generosity and interpersonal contact have stripped us of all human generosity–of putting others before ourselves. See that bum with the cardboard sign? Don’t look at her. Maybe she won’t talk to you.

When institutions (religious and otherwise) that formerly set examples for us to follow to value giving over receiving themselves have fallen prey to greed, we find ourselves groping for models of sanity and humanity.

It got to many people. Obama’s race speech was like a sip of cold water for us parched desert dwellers, a breath of air for those of us suffocating from the effects of hatred and exclusion. His speech shines with idealism. But those of us whom the speech touched are fickle, and the media toss everything down the memory hole within hours of publication.

So what about you and me in our real everyday lives? What small changes can we make that can open up the floodgates, open up the closed doors into a different world? Since the world revolves around money, what changes can we make in our own lives to change our relationship to it and to others, to begin to turn depression into refreshing happiness?

The “change” Obama talks about won’t come from him. Nor from any “leader,” nor from any public policy. If you and I continue to just say no, nothing is going to change.

Change is a grassroots effort. It must come from the bottom up. From you and from me. Giving is not just about plopping cash into the collection plate on Sunday or about slipping a few coins into a can at the supermarket checkout to relieve whatever pangs of guilt you might have.

Giving isn’t always about money. But money is a powerful symbol in the industrialized world, and what you do with it can change your head and heart. It’s about a fundamental positive change in human consciousness. Aren’t you sick to death of competition? Aren’t you sick to death from panicky fear of lack?

Does money buy happiness? Researchers and bar-goers alike have long debated this slippery question.The verdict is far from clear. Studies show that money does make people happier, but only up to a point. Beyond a certain level, additional income yields hardly any additional happiness. The United States, for instance, is four times wealthier than it was in 1950 yet Americans report being no happier than they were half a century ago. A new study, published in the journal Science, suggests that what matters most is not how much money we have but, rather, what we do with it. Spending money on others, it shows, can boost our own happiness.

The following study asks: What if?

The Secret to Happiness? Giving.
By Elsa Youngsteadt
ScienceNOW Daily News
20 March 2008

Think you’d be happier if you won the lottery or just had a few extra bucks in your pocket? Think again. Overturning classic economic wisdom, new research shows that it’s not how much you have that matters, it’s how you spend it. People who donate their dollars to charities or splurge on gifts for others are more content than those who squander all the dough on themselves. Money does seem to buy some happiness–studies show that rich folks are a little more upbeat than the poor (ScienceNOW, 15 August 2005). But the wealth-happiness connection is weak, and economists struggle to explain why, for example, the U.S. population has not become happier as it has become more affluent. One possibility is that people simply don’t spend their extra money in ways that lead to lasting cheer. Read the rest>>

The researchers first asked a group of college students how happy they were. They then gave the participants money — either $5 or $20. Half were told to spend the money on themselves. The others were told to spend it on others, such as giving a gift to a friend or making a charitable donation. That evening, the researchers again asked the students to gauge their happiness.

It turns out that the participants who spent money on others reported a much greater happiness boost than the ones who spent money on themselves. And, surprisingly, the amount of money the students were given didn’t seem to matter at all. It was how they choose to spend it that determined their happiness levels.

A Little Giving Goes a Long Way

“This suggests that even making really small changes in how one spends money can make a difference for happiness,” says Elizabeth Dunn, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Canada and one of the authors of the study.

In another study, the same researchers tracked the happiness levels of 16 employees who received a profit-sharing bonus. Again, the findings were the same: those who spent their bonus on others reported the greatest happiness boost.

“The size of the bonus turned out to not matter at all,” says Dunn. “What mattered is how they spent the money.”

The findings are far from ironclad, partly because they rely on “self reports” of happiness, and those are not always reliable. But there is a growing body of research that lends scientific credence to the old adage: it’s better to give than to receive.

The Happiness Gap

“Just the fact that helping others makes us feel good — and I think that says something positive about human nature,” says Dunn.

That may be, but another study suggests we’re not very good at assessing human nature. Dunn and her colleagues asked a group of college students what they thought would make them happier: spending money on themselves or on others. The vast majority of respondents said: spending money on themselves.

Apparently, there is large chasm between what we think will make us happy and what actually does.

Apparently, the next study needs to answer the question What is happiness?