Where did those people go? The ones who gave to a cause or built something not because it was an investment opportunity or a way to secure their legacy, but because their conscience said, “This is the right thing to do.”
It’s been bothering me ever since. On my twenty-minute drive to Gibson. Walking Pretzel. Watching Jeopardy with Alissa and Judah. Because that question itself is a spiritual one. It’s not a political or power play kind of question. These kinds of questions have a way of burrowing deep inside you, like a mole digging holes in your front yard. It won’t go away on its own. You have to trap it first.
Carnegie. Not the dude who was a robber baron. I’m looking at the man who, after accumulating his wealth, said, “I owe something back. Something no law can collect.” So he put his money to work, building libraries where none existed. Just because something inside him said it would be a good idea.
A good idea. That voice. Where did it go? I don’t hear it much anymore in our culture, where wealth and affluence are abundant. Why? What happened? I want to know why there isn’t more building into people. Then we start pointing our fingers at greed. It’s all the greedy people. It’s easy to blame it all on selfish interests geared to accumulate more money and stuff.
I hear the voice. It keeps coming back to me, but it’s faint. I struggle to hear it, but I know it’s there. Is it still inside our culture? I’m not sure. If it is, I’m seeing very little evidence of it.
Greed is real. Greed is everywhere. It deserves its bad reputation. But is it the whole story? I think something quieter happened. It was a slower building. Systems designed to replace voices.
Our society decided that generosity was too important to leave to conscience, so we institutionalized it. We created nonprofits, tax codes, government programs, and capital campaigns for giving. Instead of letting one person act charitably, we tried our best to manufacture generosity at scale. And somewhere in that transfer, the weight got lost. Does anyone feel personally responsible when there’s a program for it?
I know it’s true because I’ve rationalized my thinking, believing that an organization or a church will handle the need. Why should I? I mean, there’s a mutual fund supporting people who have nowhere to live, right? There’s a policy proposal moving through committee to feed forty-five families in Cape Girardeau County who can’t make enough money to feed their four kids. But I keep driving. I scroll by, keeping my life at a comfortable distance from any of the needs I just acknowledged, handing them over to someone else.
That’s not generosity. It’s delegation. Dressed up as concern. Here’s what breaks my heart a little. When Covid hit, and our collective worldwide suffering was impossible to abstract, when it was your neighbor and your coworker and the woman at the grocery store with the mask around her chin? That’s when people gave. Not a little. A lot. Not to institutions. To people. Families living in their own communities. Giving circles formed in a matter of days. Strangers dropped groceries on porches, without prompting. Someone I know paid three months of rent for a family she barely knew. She said she had it. They didn’t. It was the whole calculation. Crisis stripped away a comfortable distance, and the old impulse, the Carnegie effect, came washing over us like a tsunami, taking out greed like never before. It was like generosity had never left.
That means it’s still here. It’s inside us. Waiting. Do we need a better nonprofit? Or a smarter tax policy? Do we need more billionaires with a change of heart? Sure. Because those things matter, however, they’re not the answer to the deeper spiritual problem.
I think the answer is close enough for you to touch it. It’s a person in your life right now who needs something. Something that only you can give. Money? Maybe. I’m thinking it’s more time. More presence. How about a phone call? Take them out for lunch or coffee. Whatever the one particular thing is that you, and only you, are positioned to offer because of who you are. The voice that says, “This is mine to do.” Me? I’m doing my best to listen. To let the weight of it land on me and stay there long enough for me to actually do something. That’s not a policy platform. It’s one simple decision. Show up. Stick around for a minute. And maybe, that’s where it starts.
Keep reading.
Zero Expectations — first. It’s the face the essay is missing. The participant who needed something only you could give. That’s the incarnational proof of everything My Turn argues.
Why I’d Be a Terrible Counselor — second. The delegation instinct. The impulse to hand it off. That’s the honest self-implication that runs underneath My Turn.
Between the Buildings — third. The almost-kept-walking moment at Gibson. Proximity. With a cost.
Joe Class III writes at fiveminuteobservations.com. He is a storytelling consultant and the author of the forthcoming memoir Show Up. Stay. Risk It All.
What did you notice?