The right thing to do

When your child asks about charity, what will you tell them?

Giving of oneself is elementary, like sharing a cookie with the snot-nosed kid that always puts his mat next to you at naptime. See a need, open your heart and fill the void. The result is you enhance someone’s existence and stir warm feelings in your heart. Few things are easier to digest.

However, adulthood seeps into the act and adds several thick layers between charity and your will to give. Suddenly helping someone or some organization involves weighing allegiances, biases and granite-hard indifference. Sure, you might dig some sense of satisfaction and positivity from the eventual rubble, but you bury the fundamental premise of charity and helping your fellow man.

These complications make it hard to quench our little people’s curiosity about helping people. Young parents know this all too well. Believe me, I know.

Picture this: the afternoon sun was hanging outdoors on a beautiful summer day. Yours truly and the World’s Greatest First Grader were inside a tiny living room watching a television news broadcast surrounded by a mix of subdued adults and hyper children. Intermixed among the daily murder and violence digest was a story about how a couple of thousand folks teamed up to fix some objects of perceived neglect in their community. The results of this particular event drew some smiles from Daddy’s friends and a grumble or two from your favorite writer.

Reading my twisted face, World’s Greatest First Grader asked why the people helped with the project.

In the best-case scenario, I would have said the folks in the news story saw a need they couldn’t ignore. They came out to help and make their neighborhood better. Logically, that answer fits the puzzle perfectly. Anyone watching the event on television would probably believe it. Again, that’s the best case scenario. However, that answer wouldn’t be truthful.

Again, adulthood makes charity hard. Truthfully, the answer wasn’t quite that easy. I thirsted to prattle on about decades of community indifference, media bias/laziness and cases of inflated morality, but those things are 30,000 feet above the head of a 6-year-old. The best case scenario was easier to explain, so that’s the response the World’s Greatest First Grader received. She was happy, I was stuck and the clock kept ticking.

You’ve read the following phrase here before – charity shouldn’t be this difficult to swallow.

When someone does something nice, you ought to be able to look your child in the eye and shoot a straight answer why it occurred. You shouldn’t have to consider motives, biases or other aquifer-like circumstances. The answer should be the same every time. Your child should know people helped not because of affiliation, but because it was the right thing to do.

Charity is not just about the act itself. Charity is about looking inside every time and helping because it’s the right thing to do.