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No Reason to Do Good
Last year was a hard one on virtually everybody. It was particularly hard on my family. In late June, during one of the busiest times of the year for a farming family, my parents lost a barn and several pieces of equipment to a fire.
I remember answering the phone and my Mom on the other end saying only, “It’s gone.” After the fire, my parents received a lot of support and help from the community. We were humbled; at least that’s what we thought.
A short month or so later, while my wife and I were off celebrating our anniversary, I had a missed call from my Mom due to the not-so-great Ozark Mountain cell service. I thought it was weird she’d be calling knowing we were on a getaway. It bugged us enough that my wife borrowed a stranger’s phone and called to see what was up. My brother had fallen somewhere between 30 to 50 feet out of a bucket truck and was being med-flighted to a hospital. He was unconscious with definite leg fractures and head trauma. We didn’t know the extent of his injuries but were fairly certain he’d survive.
Being a subcontractor, his health insurance was questionable at best. As the main provider for his family with the prospect of being out of work indefinitely, there was a lot of stress and need.
Once again, the community pulled together and humbled my family beyond belief. A benefit feed and auction raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000. Friends and family got together and cut over 20 rick of wood for him. Countless other donations of food, time, and resources were given.
A couple of months ago, a three-year-old neighbor boy was diagnosed with cancer. His aunt died of cancer her senior year of high school 20 years ago. A benefit feed and auction this past weekend raised nearly $60,000 for the family.
I say all this because these acts of kindness and generosity have humbled me to the point I’m ashamed of my past reluctance to give and serve. I now view the world differently and feel obligated to do more.
I hate the idea that now I have a “reason” to do good. Better late than never, I guess.
If I get a chance to share some wisdom with a young person it would be this: Don’t wait to do good for a reason, do good for no reason.
Published in General
Don’t ever feel guilty; the past is what it is. Just do your best going forward. Passing on that advice to younger people is a great thing.
And there’s a whole lot of “good” you can do right here at home. You don’t have to go to Africa or Central America to do good.
Charity is a good thing, but only if you’re allowed to discern the merit and recipient of the charity. Government coerced charity doesn’t allow that and enables worthless people to demand our money as an entitlement.
What a wonderful thing to hear. It certainly helps my confidence that Americans will help one another.
That is a very sweet story. Thank you for sharing it. I have to stop my mind from racing to politicize it and just cherish its message, pure and simple.
Thanks for the reminder of the type of people that surround us every day. There are lots of opportunities for gratitude and humility, I appreciate you opening my eyes to another one.
Stories like this are one reason why I decided to quit social media (except Instagram cause its just pictures) and rely more on my interactions with actual people. Do that and generally your faith in humanity will be restored….mostly. lol I travel a lot and travel more when vacationing and there are a LOT of good people out there. Generally, people want to help those in need and have way more shared experiences than differences…..regardless of what twitter or CNN or Fox want to tell you.
America is a good country full of good people. Someone — no idea who — once observed that we love the things we take care of. I think that’s true, and that we lose something when we shift the burden of caring for each other onto the government.
And I think farm country is uniquely good for the spirit.
How is your brother doing? You are blessed to have so many kind people around you –
He’s doing better. His leg is still healing. He’s doing therapy now and that is doing a lot of good. Unfortunately his strength and endurance still isnt where it needs to be to go back to work. Plus he still has some pain if he’s been up too long.
Your comment reminded me of when I was driving delivery for a pizza place.
The owner was extremely protective of his women drivers, and one neighborhood in San Rafael Calif was considered rather scary. A motel called The Bermuda Palms was eventually nixed as somewhere we could safely go. People would order pizzas and then shoot up heroin. By the time we arrived with the pizzas they ordered, they were often incoherent and didn’t even know what a pizza was. (I think that place has been renovated and is A-okay now, some 35 years later.)
One late night right before closing someone called and really wanted a pizza. They lived on a street that had been declared off limits, as a driver at another store had been knifed and robbed in one of those buildings. But it was a woman who called, with kids in the background, so I decided to make the delivery.
It had been so long since I’d been driving those mean streets, I got totally lost. In the dark, I kept driving around until some gangsta types in a car ahead of me stopped to talk to their homies on the sidewalk. I was trying to figure out what these folks were all saying, and also trying to remind myself not to be scared. It was a night when I was driving the company truck, equipped with the pizza logo, so anyone seeing the vehicle knew I had cash. Sitting stalled on the back street was nerve wracking.
Just then there was a tap on my window. I turned my head to gaze at a black guy who must have been 6 and a half feet tall, and just shy of 300 pounds. Dingy windbreaker, dingy jeans, and a wicked smile. There was no way I could drive ahead, with the gangsta types blocking the road. I didn’t want to risk an accident by going in reverse. I was stuck – only thing was to deal with it. I rolled down my window.
“Ma’am,” came a warm, very soft voice. “I’ve seen you heading up & down this street for 10 minutes. You must be lost, am I right? I know these streets by heart. Tell me where you need to go & I’ll direct you there.” Talk about a reminder for me not to go judging a book by its cover. And I ended up getting the clearest directions ever.
Stories like those remind me of stories like these: