Giving Time

According to the Jesus Christ, Warren Buffet, Bill and Melinda Gates, Oprah and Bill Clinton one of the major components of happiness is giving.

People just can’t help being happy when giving something to someone else. Christmas is supposed to be about giving, but we all know there can be a lot of emotional baggage that comes with giving within families or the office.

At least once in the season we try to show our kids how to step out of that and illustrate giving on a more fundamental level.

We’ve traditionally had a very limited budget, but there is always someone who has less. We, after all, have our hierarchy of needs met: we have shelter, food, clothes and love. We are, and have always been, more blessed than others who don’t have even that. Somehow knowing this creates a feeling of gratefulness, which also induces happiness.

Today the kids and I are going with my mentoring group – a group of at-risk adolescent girls and their adult mentors – to a child development center. The mentees have much less than we do, but again, there is always someone who has less. We want to show the mentess how to benefit from the happiness-creating act of giving as well.

We’ll give hand-made Christmas cards and sing Christmas Carols and finish off with lunch.  

If you really want to give something special this year: give time. It’s in short supply these days, so everyone values it.

Sign up to be a mentor. Find a local mentoring program at mentor.org.

This post was entered into The Generous December Group Writing Project over at Babylune. If you want to get into the Christmas/Holiday spirit you can hope over and read some tear-jerking posts.