One Christmas when I was in university, I emerged from the pressure cooker of exams, (thoroughly steamed but not totally turned to mush, to push the metaphor!) and threw myself on a bus for a quick trip to Toronto for a blitzkreig shopping trip. Destination: Eaton’s Centre, natch.
I was treated to Holiday Splendour (registered trademark) in all its tinsel-covered, can’t-move-on-the escalator, full-blown glory. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise because it was December 20th or thereabouts, but having been in academic quarantine for 3 weeks I had missed the crescendo of Christmasness and thus had no clue at all. That was one of the worst things about Fall term exams; when you’re a kid, you’re justaching for December 1st so you can begin eating the chocolates out of your Regal advent calendar one by one… As a university student you’re lucky if you get more than 3 days of pre-‘Santa’ anticipation in. And much as you’ve just spent the majority of the last few months drinking beer and/or staring out the window, you can’t help but feel just a tad ripped off.
As I threaded my way through the festive hubbub, trusted friend on my arm, I saw the Salvation Army band with their little floating plastic donation bubble. I have such happy, strong associations with concert bands at Christmas time (years of playing on parade floats in a small town will do that to you – throwing candy canes from that tractor-trailer stacked up with hay bales and metal sheet music stands, you felt like the King of the World); the sight made my heart swell up.
The academic adrenaline fallout, the holiday spirit (and maybe one or two martinis pre-shopping, I can’t be sure) were all doing their thing too; I felt like joyous and giddy, like Bob Cratchitt. My dear, the children, Christmas Day! I dug into my wallet to pull out a hard-borrowed twoonie (which was a lot of money back then – enough to get you a shooter on AJ’s on Retro Tuesdays!) and strode dreamily toward the donation bubble to make my donation.
My heart sank when I glimpsed the sea of 10 and 20-dollar bills at the bottom of the bubble. How paltry my little coin would look against them! So many others were giving so much more. How could I ever make my mark? Make the fullness of my heart known to my fellow man?
Well, I dropped my twoonie in anyway, averting the bell-ringing Santa’s eyes out of embarrassment. When I recalled my heartsink to my friend, she said something I have never forgotten. (Em, it was nearly a decade ago so forgive me if I paraphrase…)
Money is not what we have to give. What we have to give is far more valuable than that. We have our time, our energy, our enthusiasm and youthful wisdom. By far most importantly, we have our influence…our ability to encourage others to let their hands do the work of their hearts well into the future. And that is worth way more than dropping a 20 into that little bucket today.
Well, this really rang with me, because I have been doing work with charities since I was a Brownie. Selling napkins for the Cancer Society, delivering cookies and juice to Blood Donors, picking up garbage on the nature trails around my hometown, assisting at the daycare centre, pushing disabled people in wheelchairs at the Ice Capades. It filled a need deep inside to me, even before I knew it was there. Ever volunteered? Cheapest, purest high you’ll ever get, I swear to you.
Standing in that mall in the Christmas craziness with my oh-so-wise and beautiful friend Emily, I pledged then that I would live my donation, rather than dropping it in a bucket. When I spoke at the Women in Engineering conference last week, I had the opportunity to share that perspective again. Revisiting that story always makes me smile: it was the day I realized I had so much more than money to give, and that the ways to give back to this wonderful world are both powerful and numerous. The exact mechanism by which we give matters, of course. But what matters infinitely more is that we do.