Gimme What You Got

I get a Medium digest like all of you, and will scroll through to see if articles are worth sharing.

But this morning one came across the feed that was NOTHING but a “here’s how to give me money and here’s how to get me other readers and here’s how YOU can effectively work FOR me.”

They may think it’s asking for support. But it came across as begging. Why?

Because that’s ALL the post was about.

No ideas, no musings, no thoughts about the world, nothing that would improve the reader’s day or mind. Just “gimme what you’ve got” (thank you, Don Henley. For those who want the whole song: https://genius.com/Don-henley-gimme-what-you-got-lyrics).

I still don’t charge for what I post here. Not saying others who DO put things behind a paywall are wrong for doing so; could be it’s their main source of income, and this isn’t mine.

But I do it because in this world today, you seem to get charged for everything: air at the gas station. A glass of water at McDonald’s. Anything and everything someone has that you don’t, someone is going to make you pony up for it.

People feel free to bully other people: gimme your seat on the airplane, gimme your parking space in front of your own house, gimme what you got. And there’s violence, Tik-tok videos or victim-screaming if you don’t.

Somehow, somewhere in the world, people need to remember to give because they care about strangers, because they don’t need a voucher from a 501(c)(3) to get their generosity to pay off on their taxes, and because they don’t need the spotlight for having done so. What’s that look like?

It’s buying the homeless person a sandwich and not needing to video it yourself.

It’s brushing off someone’s snow-buried car without even telling them.

It’s doing and giving like the benevolent angel who disappears in the mist and leaves people wondering and grateful — perhaps opening their hearts a little more so that they learn the joy of being that angel in the mist themselves.

Can I say all this because I’m rich and therefore I can afford to be generous? Hell, no. I live in a tiny house and my husband is retired on a small pension and if they succeed in killing off Social Security, that’s a massive chunk of our retired income. We don’t have a huge bank account and, like most Americans, one serious illness could bankrupt us.

But I will not sacrifice my kindness and humanity because of it. I will not say “there’s nothing I can do and by the way YOU should be giving ME something.”

If these articles are the only things I can give away that matter, then I will continue to do so. In the hopes that the gift matters to someone, somewhere, and makes a difference for them, even if I never know…or get credit for it.