Will Your Giving Deplete You?

One of the biggest fears people have with being too giving is that they will be exploited. I understand this fear. Many people will take advantage of those people they take to be kind to the degree of being weak. A person who is compulsively kind will undoubtedly run the risk of being “used up”. If being compulsively kind is all that giving involves then I would have to agree those who steer clear of it. There is a time and place for kindness but being overly kind and nice is inappropriate, unhelpful and will lead one to being exploited.

Now since I am convinced that it is absolutely essential that we try to become as giving as possible I have to rejig my understanding of giving. If giving is nothing other than being compulsively kind and nice then it would be retarded to try and become as giving as possible because you will be exploited. But what else might giving involve if it does not involve being overly kind and nice?

A very useful word to keep hold of here is the word “appropriate”. Surely giving is only giving if it is appropriate. Spoiling your child is not properly called giving. It is not giving because it is not appropriate and is not good for the child. Giving a man the rope to hang himself is similarly not correctly understood as giving.

It seems clear then that the notion of appropriacy is essential in understanding what it means to give. In fact I feel it is not incorrect to refer to giving as “doing what is appropriate in the circumstances.”

But let us flesh out this understanding of giving a little bit. It seems fundamentally that there are a whole range of different types of actions that may be appropriate in different situations. Suppose in one situation my friend is planning on cheating an old lady out of her pension. It seems that what is appropriate in this situation is smacking my friend and preventing him from executing his plan. Suppose in another situation another friend has run on hard times and needs a couple thousand to see him through the hard times. What is appropriate in this situation is to generously give my friend the money.

What is interesting about these two imaginary situations is that they require almost opposite sorts of responses from me. In the one the situation requires hardness and brutality and in the other the situation requires softness and kindness. Ultimately what both situations have in common is that in both there is an appropriate response, it is just that what precisely this appropriate response is differs between the two.

We could rephrase our understanding of giving by substituting the word “appropriate” for the word “right”. It should be clear that what is at stake when acting appropriately is doing the right thing. If giving involves being appropriate this actually means that giving means doing the right thing in the situation that you are in. This may involve any number of actions, anything from hard courage to soft generosity.

We in fact see that what is at stake is not the act itself but the intent behind the act. My action may be hard but my reason for acting may be fundamentally benevolent. If my intent is fundamentally benevolent then my act is an act of giving.

The biggest mistake people make when giving is that they equate a benevolent intent with soft and kind actions. A benevolent intent may very often translate into kind and soft actions. This is however not always the case. In some instances my benevolent intent may translate into hard and perhaps even brutal actions. Giving then is not always about being nice, it is about being appropriate; it is about doing the right thing.

To only have the soft generosity is to only have half of the element of giving. This is a failure that will result in you acting inappropriately, sanctioning mediocrity and allowing yourself to be exploited and used up. If you get giving right you will not be used up nor will you be exploited. You will be the locus of human development. You will be intolerant to mediocrity and you will be a barrier to misbehavior and immorality. Essentially you will be a bastion for what is right and appropriate.