Tag: generosity

What is generosity?

We are awash in generosity. And yet it can neither be taught nor learned, neither given nor taken. Being generous is never just being something. Nor is it just doing something, least of all just giving. Olives give olive oil, and yet they know nothing of generosity. It’s because generosity, when it is anything, is not one thing, but two. Generosity is only meaningful when it teeters between being the generous quality of a person, the heart and soul of someone, one soul, who gives, and the singular quality of a generous gift. Giver and gift, soul and thing, feeling and object.

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The soul must give itself away

True surrender is generosity. We say that to surrender is to be generous with oneself, to give of oneself, to share something intimate with another. But what exactly is being given when we, in our generosity, give of ourselves? What can it mean that we are generous with ourselves, of ourselves, for ourselves, that we give our selves? How can we both give and be given?Who is surrendering and who is surrendered? We are both the giver and the given, we are the giver and the gift. We are the actor and agent of the gift, the object, the thing, the gift that is given. We are divided asunder by the act of generosity.  By giving of our selves we give ourselves and thus our selves away, We give away the self that is the giver, the one who gives. We give the giver. To whom?

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Generosity, a story of the self

Generosity is often associated with material value, wealth or riches. It refers to giving away a material thing of value that is external to us, a thing that we ourselves had been given or had acquired, an article of clothing, a parcel of food, a precious stone. At the origin of this kind of generosity is the act of an other, of someone else who showed us some sort of generosity. It’s an exchange whereby we were given the thing, or perhaps purchased the thing in exchange for something of value. 

In this sense an act of generosity is a kind of story, a narrative, a chronology or a history, a chain of events. It’s the story of a thing that becomes possessed, then dispossessed. It’s a relation to things that come and go in a kind of cycle, things that we might, in another world, another life, have lived without, and with which we live now briefly or for a long period.

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