The act of giving and helping

  

Date Posted: 7/2/2012 12:54:13 AM

Posted By: Kitavi  Membership Level: Gold  Total Points: 1987

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The act of giving and helping people in need is fast dying. Occasionally, we talk about a good Samaritan having come out of the blue and helped us in our hour of need. It is not clear whether it is because people have become more egocentric or it is because of the diminishing culture of communal living.

If we found someone dying beside a road, we are unlikely to help because we first of all think of how helping them would make us late. We would walk away hoping that the next person will not be as busy as we are, and will therefore rescue the person. Whether it is modern life has made us busier than before is really debatable.

Have you ever noticed that people are always running around immersed in deep thought with drooping shoulders and with premature wrinkles etched on their foreheads? The common explanation for this is that we are so busy that we do not even have time for ourselves, let alone others.

People who claim to be busy, are not really busy. Being busy, is a euphemism for an insatiable craving for money, power, status and overwhelming desire to have more and more material possession. What this culture of being busy is that it makes up lose some of the essential human values such as loving others, taking care of the sick and meeting other people's needs through generosity.

Let up take the example of hunger and starvation. The two kill many people, especially children and the elderly. It is easy to say that hunger and starvation are a result of a fall in the supply of rain. We can say that this is all an issue of climate. This is true to an extent. When rain fail, people's

crops fail and they lose their sole source of food. For those who depend on livestock, their livestock die or become too famished to fetch enough money in the market to enable them buy food. The spiraling cost of foodstuffs does not lessen the pain and suffering of those faced with starvation.

However, there are people who die of hunger due to our own self-centredness. For instance, when relief food is availed by the government to help those faced with hunger and starvation, some corrupt government officials hoard the food and conspire with unscrupulous business people to sell the food at exorbitant prices to the starving people. Secondly, amid hunger and starvation,there are people who have more food than they can eat, but who see no value in sharing what they have with less fortunate. If only such people would share or donate some of the food they have, people would not have to starve to death.

However, the culture of being good Samaritans need not to die. If we stopped being too busy and set aside time for our children, we would have time to watch them grow and understand their value system. We can then inculcate the culture of generosity starting with highlighting small ways in which children can be generous. For example, a child can be encouraged to share food with another who does not have or who has come to school without. They can also be encouraged to donate clothes and shoes to a children's home. This gesture will go in a long way in clothing another less fortunate child. Later in life, they can find bigger ways of reaching out to those in need. Through small ways, we would have taught generosity to our children, created the good Samaritans that we all wish for when in need and ensured the act of giving lives on for generations.

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