How Simply Spending Money is Often Mistakened For Love
At the end of my first year in the University some awards were given and one of the categories was "philanthropism". It was given to three different people and the presenter while giving it to them was saying some things about how these people are philanthropic and all the things he mentioned that they did that showed philanthropism was giving money and buying certain things.
I remember this was one of the first times in my life that I thought about today's topic, was giving money the only way philanthropism can be practised? Definitely not. This is the definition of philanthropism:
Philanthropism means a love for humanity expressed through charitable actions or efforts to promote the welfare of others.
I remember wondering what about the students who helped those who resumed late to get into the flow of things, because there were students like that, I was one of them. I helped teach some people the first lessons they missed because they resumed late, I helped some people fill in their long registration forms that had to be submitted to different offices and I took them around showing them the offices and all that.
I was also one of the leaders during a day of clean up the faculty fixed. Are all these not really helpful and in favour of the welfare of others? Definitely! But of course things like these usually pass without notice.
This is the same way the meanings of kindness and love are usually reduced to only the part where money is spent. Not all the time but it is very usual. I've had friendships and relationships where I taught the other party a lot of things, helped them with a lot of work and gave a lot of emotional support, but when they want to praise me and talk nice about me they mainly mention the times I spent money and the other non-monetary things I did would be like a footnote 😅.
Showing love and kindness is not all about spending money, but unfortunately that's what's most impressive.
Look at these two situations:
There's no way these people could have done the things they did if they didn't have money. Imagine letting a friend in and asking for rent money only to be saving it for them. If you had no money and really needed the help with the rent how would you have pulled this off?
If you were broke and suffering how would you have been able to send a bag of rice and other condiments to a girl you're wooing just so she can eat?
But because you had the money, you pulled it off and now you're being looked at as an examplary lover. The truth is some people who have they money might not have the kindness to still pull these off, but definitely people can have the kindness but not the money and who would recognize their love and efforts at that point? Who would be impressed?
Then again people might not have the kindness and love but have the money and so pull something off to get you impressed and get viewed as good lovers, get what they want from you and go, so spending is actually not as good a yardstick as people regard it.
In fact it can be argued that it is the least of yardsticks. If you have 10,000$ and you give out 100$ to a situation that required $40 that is very impressive for those in the situation but can it be said that was anything to you? Did that cost you as much as it would have cost a person to give in say three days of their time and effort trying to fix that problem if say the problem was sitting by a sick person?
I'm not saying the more it costs us the more love it shows, I'm saying it takes more love to give your time, energy and presence than it takes to pull out $100 from your $10,000.
It takes more love to spend your time to teach students the lessons they missed because they resumed late, to help them fill their forms, and to take them around showing them the offices they need to submit them to than it takes to pull out $100 from your $10,000.
The End
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