Stories of Kindness from Around the World

My Biggest Act Of Generosity


--by shamash, posted Mar 24, 2016

I’ve been doing the wonderful Laddership program with ServiceSpace. It's a program to help people understand the values of Service Space and explore if such an approach would work in their own organisations or projects, through inner transformation and leading to outer manifestation.

With each week that goes by, we are recommended videos to watch. And each video has such a powerful, deep influence on me…not just in theory, but in my heart.

By week 3, I found myself listening to several videos from the program every morning, and before going to bed each evening.

I watched some videos again and again…and my heart grew more and more open…more loving…more free. My worldview began to shift.

Then on a Thursday evening, two things happened.

A large sum of money appeared in my account. It was from a mindfulness talk I’d given online many months ago on Skype…I was surprised at how much i got…I wasn’t actually expecting any money!

And at the same time, someone who will remain nameless, expressed her financial challenges…she has a wedding coming up and her finances were just not working out...it was from someone who I’d worked with for a few years…a colleague and a friend.

Then the thought crossed my mind - what if I gave all the money I had received, to her?

The thought was quite scary…the amount I was thinking of giving was 10x bigger than anything I’d ever donated to anyone! Logically it didn’t make sense…there’s so many charities I could give the money to…and obviously I do need money to pay for my own savings and bills...but my heart was saying that I should do this.

I wrote the message of what I wanted to say to her and the gift I was proposing, but didn’t send it…I wanted to sleep on it as it seemed pretty crazy!

I was scared that if this becomes something I do regularly, I’ll eventually have no money left! That’s what my head was saying.

The next morning, I woke up and watched a video on Karmatube … it was a video about the automatic thanking machine …the video brought tears to my eyes…and I’ve never cried about any video on the internet, as far as I remember! The kindness on the video was immense and moving.

I thought that experience couldn’t have been a coincidence. After a few more minutes, I decided to send the message. I'd just experienced the power of kindness. 

I had studied the different forms of capital on the Laddership program - and although I’d seemingly lose financial capital, I had so much kindness capital to gain from the process! Then you can consider wellbeing capital, resilience capital and many more. I was privileged and gaining from the experience, not losing anything. My head was starting to agree with my heart…a bit!

A barrier of some fear was still there, and I could feel my heart beating faster as I sent the message to my friend of my proposed gift … along with a big smile on my face. I told her to keep the donation anonymous and not to tell anyone apart from her partner. That made it even more fun! :)

After sending the message, I felt wonderful and proud of myself.

She replied back saying the message and gift had made her cry and it was the kindest thing anyone had done for her … she also said it’s funny how someone who’s supposed to be spreading happiness in the world is making her cry - it was a joke!

That act of generosity made it easier for me to do more acts of generosity in the days that have followed that one. All quite out of character of me … spontaneous and in the moment. I feel I’ve stretched my generosity muscles a bit and it makes being generous easier for me - I’m grateful to my teachers and fellow students on the program to create such a space for me to do this.

I think generosity is much more than giving away sums of money…as Khalil Gibran said ‘You give little when you give of your possessions. It’s when you give of yourself, that you truly give.'

But as I discovered, transferring possessions is also deeply moving. 

Although financially some numbers in an account has moved from one to another, and so in some ways nothing has been gained or lost financially in the global balance sheet - at least two hearts have grown a little warmer. 

The global balance of love and fear has tilted a bit more towards love . <3



999 Reads
  • Posted by shamash
  • Mar 24, 2016
  • 87 Smiles, 11 Comments



Please Log In To View/Add Comments, and Much More. :)