I wrote an essay five years ago with the above title (SHEN-The Haven Newsletter, Issue 29, Spring 2002). The focus was on personal growth and change and my view of that process. It reflected the challenges and obstacles we all face in allowing ourselves to change even a little bit, and that changing a little bit at a time is how the process works best. Change is most durable when it occurs sparingly.

It is important, I think, to sometimes re-visit past experiences to mark small changes that have occurred over time. This essay is an expansion of what I wrote previously to mark current thinking that has meaning for me.

There is obvious ambiguity in the title. It implies being asked to give spare change to a street person versus granting our selves generosity in our lives in the form of movement toward something better.

Generosity is an issue of current interest for Mary and me. I am reading a book entitled Being Generous by Lucinda Vardey and John Dalla Costa. They distinguish being generous and being charitable.

Being generous affects a change, a transformation, whereas charity fills a need. It is charitable to give a hungry person a fish. It is generous to teach a hungry person how to fish.

It is charitable to given a street person your spare change. Charity is giving what we have in excess, what we can easily spare.

It is generous to involve street people in a project of producing and selling newspapers that will help them earn money to make a living. Generosity is based on what we find personally meaningful in our interactions with others. It is an attitude requiring reflection and careful thought.

In generosity, we expand as we support others to expand. Generosity is life altering for all concerned. The impact of generosity endures rather than ebbs until a need arises again. The impact of generosity grows; it is “generative” because it activates motivation to make additional changes, a little at a time, sparingly and with an increasing sense of hope.

Charity is based in sympathy. If we are charitable with our selves we are at risk for feeling sorry for our selves. In a sense, we make our selves charity cases as “less than” others or the image of how we expect things should be. We can be “needy” and neediness can inhibit our natural drive towards growth and change nourished by generosity. And sometimes we just need to be needy before moving forward.

Generosity is based in compassion. Self-compassion is an act of generosity toward our selves that is generative. It is an acceptance of how things are, rather than how we expect them to be. It is the starting point for change.

Self-compassion is an alternative to the self-absorption that comes with holding an attitude of sympathy towards our selves. Generosity through self-compassion is probably best encouraged with the self-directed message “I expect nothing” which ironically leaves open all kinds of possibilities for change.