Thursday, September 12, 2013

Imagine generosity

I woke from a dream of singing the last line's of John Lennon's IMAGINE, and spent a long time thinking about how exactly that line went.....what was it before "...join us, and the world will live as One."   It seemed to me it was words about throwing away ego, being more generous, living without limits....and I pondered this for a long time as it related to my current life, and my recent questions about appropriate behavior.
Those came from a man who supplies our "viveres", our food baskets for the moms.  He came to our director yesterday and said he has "un necesidad..."    How I've come to hate those words, because here EVERYONE has "un necesidad" and often comes to me - as the local perceived-as-rich white person - with that problem.  Rarely just asking for a handout or "loan," but selling something of theirs, usually cortes (local wrap-around skirts that I use to make clothing to sell to support our project) or guipiles (traditional women's tops).  These "necesidades" are everything from family from the Capital coming to visit and they are expected to pay to feed them for several days, to medical expenses, to school expenses for their kids, to their mortgage or "hipoteca" due and they can't pay.  Good reasons, I'd like to help.  But I can buy the materials I need super-cheap at a textile market across the lake, I can't pay 3 x the price here in San Pedro because that means less for our project, which ALSO has "un necesidad."   The mean side of me says, Maybe I should say we have "un necessidad" too, could they please donate to our project??
So this supplier of food has "un necesidad" and our director says we should pay him what he's asking - three months in advance - because he does a lot for us.  "He always gives us a break on our baskets," he says.  "He buys in quantity and passes that savings on to us."
Well, that's why we pay three months in advance, so that he can do that. 
I come from the U.S.  I cannot imagine a business contact that you have coming to you to ask for an advance because they have personal economic problems.  Unheard of, unless you are family or something.  But here it's expected??  I'm a bad person if I don't do this?   Our landlady had "un necessidad" six months or so ago and wanted a year-and-a-half in advance, and I paid it, in order to keep this good-site-at-low-cost.  And it has nearly busted our project budget!   I haven't taken in enough since then to pay our two teachers a regular (low) salary.
I go to the father of the family I live with, because I have heard him say, "If somebody needs something, I do it, because you never know when you might be the needy one."
I know "what goes around, comes around" at least in theory.
When I first came to Guatemala I had $16,000 in the bank.  And I was generous when my Spanish teacher needed $200 for brain surgery for her son.  And with each reasonable thing that came up after that.  I believed that you enter the energetic flow of money with positivism and what you give out comes back to you.
$16,000 later I began to wonder.   Surely some of those dollars were spent on my various trips to the U.S. to do Benefit Events for the project, a few dollars were spent on furniture I needed ($125-150 each for 3) and going to restaurants here with friends (usually $6-10).  Over $3000 went in loans to a friend who returned it, not in money, but in work.  At least $1000 went to put a roof on the house of a woman who was struggling to make ends meet.  And there was $50 here and $75 there, each of them to help someone out.
And now I have nothing left of that $16,000.   Did any of it return to me?  Can I believe that philosophical concept?  At some point I realized MUCH had returned to me through my generosity - appreciation and esteem from my friends in the States who know about my project, MUCH appreciation, genuinely expressed, from the mothers in our project whom I've helped for four years.  Just nothing monetary.  Although my son has recently been very generous in helping me by property.  Is all that part of that "flow"?   I think so.   I just don't have personal money to give out any more.  And I'm very protective of our project money since it's down to the minimum to keep us giving classes and food.
So what did the father of my family say?  "No, this is not an expectation here; it's not 'part of the culture', and you're not a bad person if you don't do it."
Well that freed me up to think more creatively.  So I went back to the phone and told our director that we would pay one month in advance now, one at the end of the month, and then in December we would pay for Dec, Jan, Feb.  A more balanced approach.  I hope he accepts it, but if not there are other tiendas (stores), and we can make it clear from the beginning that there are advances every three months and nothing more.
But still, early this morning I pondered the extent of my appropriate limitations.  I am happy to give anyone something that I am not using.  I am happy to give a small loan if there's surety of repayment, or work they can do to repay it.  These things actually do make me happy - and to some extent I think the joyous physical feeling you get from generosity should be its own reward.    But even though my house is too large for me, am I willing to have a family come live with me?  Probably not, although maybe for a short-term emergency.  I think I'm probably not willing to give up my personal needs for space and time, at this point in life.  Though I have freely given 3 mornings a week and many other hours to both Ayudame and my preschool project, and have trucked suitcases through airports and exerted MUCH to produce the benefits in the States every six months.  And I will always listen to someone's troubles if they are sincere.  Maybe those are my limits.
Am I missing something?  Is the guy who gives the shirt off his back freer than I am?  Probably. 
This isn't the end of this questioning, and probably is something I'm here to learn. 
Does my horoscope give me counsel?  It suggests that that fine balance between contraction and expansion, between "Mrs. Gotrocks" and "the Scrooge," between generous and stingy are an important learning point for me in this lifetime.
At least that's where I'm at for now.  Doing the best I can.
This morning I looked up the lyrics of the song and they were not as demanding as I dreamed, "I hope some day you'll join us,  And the world will live as One."

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