In truth, the provider of charity is blessed at least as much
as the receiver. But I’d like to offer
this analogy for helping others, a perspective I hope you will consider.
Please close
your eyes and imagine with me. Wait, that won’t work because then you can’t
read this. Never mind, just play along. You are alone in a small cheaply built
two-person canoe. You are paddling a wide quickly moving river under a full
moon, surrounded by cliffs and a scattering of trees, with no shoreline to
speak of.
There are a
few boats of strangers silently paddling some distance in front and behind you.
The only
noise you can hear is that of the current and the helpless souls struggling
desperately to swim. None of them have a
life vest. Some cry out or whimper in fear, even the very large. Some are
children and others are old and sick. They are all around you and the other
boats. One or two of the stronger
swimmers are trying to hold up the weaker ones.
Precious few
people in the boats try to help in any way.
Most act like they can’t even see them. Some distance in front you can
see a person clinging to the back of a canoe while the owner paddles on
unaware. The person in the boat directly in front of you isn’t paddling at all.
Her ores are just resting in the bow, moving with the current as she holds her
hands over her ears to muffle the sounds of desperation from the river.
But you, you
have a choice to make. You can’t un-see what is clearly before you. Will you
help? Who will you help? You obviously can’t fit them all in your little boat.
You consider the minimum you can do first.
What will stop someone’s suffering just enough to stop your own? Then
you consider the most you can do. Choose someone too big or too desperate and
you will very likely sink your own boat and in the process lose your ability to
help anyone else. Maybe there is some one just right for you to help. Then it’s
time to choose.
Some of you
will first want to know why they ended up in the river in the first place and
what did the others do to “earn” their canoes. But that question’s only purpose
is to delay or prevent your action. It momentarily quiets the voices but
changes nothing. You have a canoe while other poor souls struggle. The question
before you is simply, what, if anything, will you do. Inaction while
deliberating is still a choice, and more to the point, still inaction.
How much
easier it would be to walk away if you were watching from a far like the
cliff’s edge above it all. “So sad to see but I’m way up here; there can’t be
anything for me to do.”
If we are
fortunate enough to not be in the water ourselves what do we choose to
believe about those who are and our abilities to do anything about it? The
wellspring of action is belief, and belief is a choice.
