Generosity

 Is not generosity a great virtue? Indeed, yes! Indeed it is. Being generous makes us a better person, I think. We become kinder, nobler, puerer through generosity. Why? Generosity means that we have to be less self-centred, we have to be more other-oriented as well.

Yet that generosity is the best when 'your left hand knows not what you right hand gave'. In other words, generosity should not be for publicity. It should not be to boast about it to others because such bragging behaviour, too, is self-obsessed.

Equally important it is to be generous with, to offer, to extend warmly a helping hand to someone who realises its value. If people consider you and your generosity as necessary only when they need it, and forget you once the difficult moment is over, most possibly, they think of you as a simplistic fool who can be easily cheated/conned. 

Even to such crooks, give. Give them your forgetting of their smallness. I suppose, even to the worst person who continues to harass you in multiple ways, give the gift of your completely, totally ignoring his/her crookedness.

I do think that the best gift could be the gift of time. Everything else can come back. But the seconds and our close ones, lost once, never come back the second time.  When we invest time for someone else, we are literally giving a part of our life which can never be reclaimed.

Yet just as generosity is not for a show-off, it is also not empty, dry, pitiless CSR, right? Neither should generosity be only future-focussed. 'Real generosity to future,' says Albert Camus, 'lies in giving all to the present.'

Well, whatever be the motive, generosity and kindness never harm, neither the giver nor the receiver. So, give, be kind, be generous right now, today. For who knows what would happen tomorrow? So give your best to every nano-second in/of your life!

Pratima@"None has ever become poor by giving," writes Anne Frank.