All who joy would win must share it. Happiness was born a twin. – Lord Byron
IT IS SAID that one thing that could make a lasting difference to your contentment is working with another – or others – on a cause larger than your own.
It is not unknown for people seemingly too busy at first, but reluctantly taking on a mission of good because it was the right thing to do, to derive thereof grand fulfilment and completeness. That’s why the cynics say giving is selfish: it just makes the donor happier.
Simple as the sentiment of happiness is, the state of it is complex and often difficult to measure, say the neuroscientists.
We who reason in less clinical form experience empathy with and happiness for those people we assist, rather than feel accomplishment in ourselves for having helped. It may be said we are driven by that golden rule so succinctly given in the Gospel According To Luke: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Assisting others
The neuroscientists argue that no matter what we say we are actually hard-wired to be altruistic; that it is difficult for humans to be truly selfish, because generosity feels so good; that while charity has a reputation of helping others, it has too an almost perfect alibi for our helping ourselves; that assisting others may be as primal a human pleasure as eating food or having sex.
Harcourt Walkes may not agree; and, at the risk of being labelled soppy, we won’t either. We believe the gentle taxi driver’s giving last week of a US$19 000 haemodialysis machine to the Artificial Kidney Unit of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) was as selfless as selfless could be.
Grant you, the 63-year-old Bagatelle, St James resident, who has been working with the QEH for 30 years, was drawing from his nigh $3 million jackpot win last month via the Mega 6 lotto draw.
But Mr Walkes, a member of the Barbados Diabetes Association, said his charity was a part of a promise he had made to God Almighty.
“I prayed to win that money; and I said if I did, I would give back ten per cent.”
The donation to the QEH is part of his tithing. Of course, the Barbados Diabetes Association also benefited from Mr Walkes’ kindness, as other entities surely will.
In a most interesting way – perhaps unwittingly – Mr Walkes has challeged those among us with means, however limited, to be more charitable for the greater good. And it matters not if even ultimately it affords us the givers greater pleasure than it does the given.
