The idea of sharing wealth rather than hoarding it is a rather remarkable turn in one’s viewpoint. To constantly struggle with this is natural. If you’re a bit Hobbesian, as I believe many of us are, you do your best to do your best so that you can get a bigger piece of the pie. You’re not necessarily concerned about the “why” of it, you’re satisfied with just trying to get more. Deep down, you may feel this discomfort that someone is going to take it, or you’re going to need it, and that becomes that ballast against the waves of uncertainty in everyone’s life. It provides a comfort, and whether that comfort is real or imagined, it nevertheless exists, and it tides the overwhelming anxiety surrounding just how quickly things change around you. Many argue that that is the wrong position to take.
The real work, the real gift, is to share the wealth. It is to provide all with your wisdom, your specific gifts. It is to help and to create and to make the pie much bigger. It is as close to a call of duty as you can get. Instead of hoarding, the idea is to freely give. Usually, this comes in the form of intellectual knowledge, but really this can be tangible property as well. You give and you shall receive. It’s biblical (and way before the bible came around stories like these were passed down.) Whether you have a moral responsibility to do so or whether you just believe it’s the right way to go about it, the idea is to freely give away that which you have access to. The trick-the rub here, is that you must do so without regard for the gift coming back to you. The motivation is just as important. Give, without regard of whether it comes back to you. Help without demanding thanks. David Brook’s once wrote about a nun (or maybe not, I can’t recall) who would help with the sick and the poor and the drunks. And they wouldn’t ever thank her. They’d spit at her and curse her and really just be awful. It didn’t matter. The point wasn’t that you’d get some ethical stars in return, but that you’d do the act for the sake of the righteousness of the act.
I am not righteous. Far from it. I’m quite selfish. Yet as the years fly and drag on (all at the same time) I recognize some internal pull towards the sharing and less towards the Hobbesian hoarding. Perhaps it’s kids and the idea that germinates inside you: make it better for them. Perhaps idealism and self preservation meet somewhere. I don’t really know. I know that I struggle very much with the idea of giving, rather than taking. The only other thing I know about this is that it cannot be conceptual. You must do it, over and over. Practice. Over and over. And don’t worry about the results. Just act.