Generosity, deconstructed
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Hello friends,
I hope you are well. It seems like my last post on The Pain of Choosing has been striking a chord with many of you. Thanks for those who write back - I really appreciate it.
I originally planned this week for the 2nd post about The Pain After You Made The Choice, but life rarely goes according to plan because of a juicier topic that came up... Generosity and Money. (the Decision post will be next week though, I promise!)
Here's the story.
Recently, I have some tricky money conversation. I agreed to do a piece of work with a client company, but since time was rushed, we didn't have the chance to talk about compensation. As such, I just went ahead and delivered it, which satisfied the client. However, when I named the price, the client felt that it was too high.
While the hiccup got resolved quickly, it also brought up a deeper reflection about money and *generosity in the connection economy. * that I wanted to share.
As this year's theme for me is “Joyful Livelihood”, I've been reflecting a lot about many deep assumptions and beliefs about how I can, should and actually do make money. Meanwhile, I've been thinking about generosity for 7 years since I first knew the Enneagram (and an Enneagram Five needs to practice Generosity in order to evolve, in theory) How do I make a living while being generous while still growing? I imagine this is a question many of you might be asking yourself too.
Personally I often trip up between knowing what I need and asking for for what I want.
Which brings me to an excellent short article on Deconstructing Generosity by the insightful Seth Godin. Let's deconstruct it to find an answer.
“It’s understandable that generosity creates trust, but also worth noting that trust is required to provide generosity. If a well-meaning person started leaving sandwiches all over the airport departures lounge, her goal probably wouldn’t be achieved, because we just don’t trust random unwrapped sandwiches left anonymously in public places.”
“That’s one reason why it seems so difficult to give ideas away online. We don’t know you, so we don’t trust you, perhaps not even enough to invest the time to find out what it is you’re trying to give us or how you're working to help us. Earning this trust, in an effort to be generous, is time consuming and dissuades some from going down this path. “
Indeed, the first and foremost important work is building trust . Am I building enough trust with the people I want to serve, so that when I have something to offer them, they know that it is an offering for them rather than a random sandwich thrown out there? Without a receiver, there is no generous giving.
“Sacrifice is a crucial element in our perception of generosity. When someone takes the time to share a finite resource, one that they cannot hope to be repaid for, generosity happens. So favors can’t be generous, because favors imply a sort of gift economy of repayment being due.”
This to me is quite a counter intuitive definition of favor, since usually you would think that giving favors would be a generous act. Yet, even when you do a favor for free, there is an expectation that eventually there is a sort of repayment, not necessarily in money but maybe in status, relationship capital etc... Have you heard of the phrase “I owe you a favor?” A favor implies an emotional bank account or economy of some sorts even as gift. It's not so much about generous or stingy but rather fair or not fair.
Now we arrive at an interesting question: By this definition, can you be generous while also being fair?
On the surface it doesn't seem possible. If I'm being fair with you, this is how much to charge. Yet if I am being generous, I should not be charging that much right?
As I was tripping myself up again, an insight came. Fairness is a finite game feature (play to win, i.e making more money) while generosity is an infinite game condition. (play to keep playing, i.e keep on giving and never running dry of the gift)
Maybe generosity is something more foundational, deeper and more humane than a fair exchange of value. Maybe it's something that once we try to quantify it, we kill it.
In another word, it is much more about the joy of service and less about how much to charge. These are two separate actions.
Continue this generous deconstruction (pun intended)
“Kindness also rides along with generosity. When someone is generous with us but does it begrudgingly, just this one time, don’t ask again, face scrunched with tension, then no, it doesn’t feel generous.”
“And the killer of generosity is bitterness. You may have noticed while traveling on airlines like American that many of the employees you encounter act as though they’re trapped. Trapped by a race to the bottom in efficiency, trapped by a long history of bureaucracy that offers no control and no room for humanity. [...] It’s not surprising, then, that any attempt at organizational kindness (of putting on a smile and do the good service thing because one has to) instead feels like a poorly constructed marketing come-on, not the human act of generosity we seek.”
Maybe it is also not that generous when it's beyond one's boundary of how much to give. Which means that we really have to practice being in touch with ourselves so that when we cannot do something with a full heart, we can say a firm No rather than to say a meh Yes and hoping that it will be a generous act.
I wish I'd have more maturity and self-understanding to say more often “Sorry, I can't really do you this favor right now because it will leave me feeling bitter”.
"There is also the generosity that we feel when someone comes with right intent. People like Bernadette Jiwa, Tina Roth Eisenberg and Mitch Joel have no ulterior motive in the work they share online. They share because they can, because turning on a light for themselves also turns on a light for others. "
Another word for “turning a light on” is joy, which comes to people who do it for the right intention of sharing what also brings themselves joy.
Of course, it's one thing to think about joy as an idea and another thing altogether to experience joy. Both are important. The later for me is that alive expansiveness in the body, the openheartedness, the clear and energized mind that comes with the right intention and execution: to serve the greater good.
"Vulnerability, as Brene Brown and others have written about, is a key element of what it is to be human, to make art and thus to be generous. The vulnerability of showing up and caring and connecting, even if this time, it might not resonate."
Vulnerability has a lot to do with sacrifice. You have irretrivably lost the effort you put in showing up and making something when it doesn't resonate. A post like this is an example... It is generous when someone does the hard work of putting down the psychological armor and letting oneself be known more intimately. The gift of true connection often comes at the formidable cost of losing one's protection.
It is now clearer how you can charge money (let alone a lot of it), while still being generous.
If you are kind and not bitter,
if you are joyous with the intent of sharing what lights us up,
if you are vulnerable enough to dare to do something that you hope will be useful while fully accepting that it may not work
if you understand that by showing up, you are irretrivably losing something very important to you such as time with loved ones or with oneself because you choose the joy of serving,
then continue being generous.
Admittedly fairness is rather important in our normal tit-for-tat life, I'm much more interested in this infinite game of generative generosity and the beautiful ways we can be togehter rather than figuring out what makes a fair exchange. The lawyer and judge can take care of latter.
Cheers,
Khuyen
The untold part of Meditation & Inner Work journey
A rant
The inner journey not always that rosy, and sometimes you may be better just reading a book..
[from a rant on FB. This week, I'm experimenting with a slightly different structure from my usual proper blog post. For some of you who have some meditation experiences or doing inner contemplation work, this maybe relevant for you]
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Most modern rational people like you and me are initially motivated to take up meditation practice because we are so in pain with our life. Most of the time, we seek for a savior technique to relieve us from the kind of pain of having a mess inside our head. We begin the inner work journey with the intention to make our life better. We expect to feel less pained.
Yet once we start getting into it, we realize that the practice itself asks us to look straight into the pain. Small ones like our own inability to concentrate or the annoying itch on our back to bigger ones like traumas from the past, often showing as physical pain, or just whirlwind of uncomfortable emotions inside. We observe our physical and psychological pain in much greater details, which is quite scary. Imagine watching Horror Movie in HD in the basement of a dark and dusty abandoned house!
Admittedly, if someone has told me that doing mindfulness practice may lead to this heightened perception of pain, I might have run away.
Yet, this is the part of the spiritual path that doesn't get talked about much by the explosion of the mindfulness marketplace of Headspace, Calm and the 1001 intro workshops you find out there.
It's unsurprisingly though. If your goal is to spread meditation technique and introduce people on the path, then it makes sense to do whatever it takes to best achieve that right?
I probably would have done the same thing if it were my goal. In fact, if you want to survive as a business, you’ve got to extol the benefits and gloss over the side effect. Reasonable business savviness, right.
That's all good so far. It's true that it is likely going to be quite nice at first. You'll feel calm, centered, contented, clear sometimes. Those positive states are important, because they give you a glimpse of what's possible to keep you inspired along the path.
My little concern is that I just think many people are now smart enough and deserve to know a fuller picture of the inner work journey in which these meditation practices are a part of. For these people that I'd like to serve (because I'm one of them), the cute app interfaces, fun gamification, built-in social peer pressure or charming instructor's voices etc... matter much less. What matters more is the depth of the teaching and how well the teacher embodies it.
Because this journey is not a simple one.
As far as I can tell from my experiences and knowledge, if you commit to the inner work journey (staying with whatever true in the moment) it probably won't be what you initially expected. Once in a while there might be an inspirational breakthrough, but most of the time it's rather dull. Sometimes really thorny with resistance, and sometimes it's quite painful. Not as sexy as how the posters of many enlightened gurus look.
The bad news is that there will often be plenty of initial resistance coming up as we are more able to experience our own pain more clearly.
The good news is that pain in small dose and with gentle awareness doesn’t feel as bad.
The tricky thing is to notice when we are glorifying the pain for its own sake vs when pain is part of the purification process. Like getting a Thai massage, it’s *definitely not* about the more painful the better, but sometimes you’ve got to feel something quite unpleasant at first.
I heard it may even turn into pleasure eventually, but I'm nowhere there yet.
(Shinzen Young has good description of this in his book Science of Enlightenment. Here is a good post about perceiving pain too)
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Quotes I'm contemplating this week
“Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.” - Khalil Gibran
Such a radical suggestion, esp in the vein of the generosity post above. Can I imagine myself rather beg for food from those who make it with joy than doing what doesn't bring me joy?
"To live well, don't always do easy thing. Rather, strive to do things with ease." - Anonymous.
Nice distinction between easy and ease. The former implies some sorts of hack and unworthiness, while the latter connotes a sense of freedom and mastery. Great reminder
Desire is a contract you have with yourself that says "I won't be satisfied until I have this" - Naval Ravikant
Crispy definition, very Buddhist-like. Not that desire is bad - we all do as biological creatures. We just need to be aware of them, and perhaps pick one overwhelming desire that we are okay to be always pursuing.
Lastly..
Do reach out for the Inner Critic Assessment or general conversations about life. I'd love to be helpful.