To Be or Not to Be

Have you ever wondered what makes some people generous and others stingy? It seems to me that as life moves on and I get the opportunity to see people in various situations, situations that are often stressful, often trying, usually hidden from plain sight, some people reveal a generous nature while others reveal a true nature. A nature that they keep carefully hidden, masked by reasonable behavior, but letting peek through the miserly side of themselves.

Sometimes it is an employer, taking advantage of an employees desire to stay, to remain part of the team. I have discovered there are only two reasons to underpay an employee. Either you can't pay a reasonable salary,which often happens in small, local companies. Or you refuse to pay an employee the market rate because you think you can get away with it. In other words, you reveal a stingy nature. I have seen both, and without fail, the company that truly desires to pay a fair, and yes, a generous wage usually ends up keeping top level employees for a very long time. Look at a company with a very high turnover in management and usually you find a miserly approach to employees.

But this face of human nature is not limited to the corporate world, not by any means. Families have a way of enacting events in such a way as to reveal this nature.
Divorces can be especially drained of generosity, as savings and houses and kids are divided and argued over and used as clubs to extract the last bit of revenge. Stinginess of mind and nature create more damage than any infidelity.

Mediation has brought me into the midst of family struggle with the resolution of a a loved one's estate, this generous/stingy conflict emerges. I'm not really talking about money, but the catalyst becomes money. Generous considerations given to a sibling over the course of decades is not extended to another in the matter of weeks. Ultimatums disguised in the cloak of "fair" are rationalized, while disrupting and disenfranchising another family member because they are not as agreeable...or perhaps as loved. It is sad to see siblings rip and tear and attempt to annihilate in the course of "settling the estate" when in fact all that is being settled are old scores. Of course not all are participating, but the ones who aren't are not stepping in to prevent the damage, so blame is spread all around. There are no innocents here, merely winners and losers, or perhaps only losers.

About the only emotion that this evokes in me for the stingy heart is pity. They will never learn the joy of generous living. They will never understand that generosity is only worthwhile when it is at the giver's expense. It is sad that family members can do so much more harm than Death, the prince of evil, was able to do. How very sad.
And the only responses from the stingy heart will be, "it is not logical," or "this isn't fair." No, generosity is giving when it is abundantly clear that fairness has been rejected and compassion rules the day.

They say that innocence is the first fatality of war. Well, in a family war, generosity must be the second to fall.
Live your lives generously, give all that you have, even to those who do not deserve it. Stand in the presence of the King and apologize for a generous life with, " Lord, I GAVE it all away."

And He will respond, "Welcome home, my good and faithful servant."

Godspeed. Perhaps it is time to lighten the pack.
Don