"Wealth is not to feed our egos, but to feed the hungry and to help people help themselves."
- Andrew Carnegie
Motivation Monday - Richard's Insight
Giving back has been on my mind quite a lot lately and this is a quote from what was once the richest man in the world about giving back.
Feeding the hungry, I believe, might mean more than people without food although I am sure that is a large part of it. People can be hungry in a number of ways and so this approach could in fact be quite broad. For example, hungry for knowledge, hungry for a break or opportunity in life or hungry for improving the lives of others. Even if the definition is narrow, feeding the poor is clear enough.
As for helping people help themselves, I think this is a noble use of one's wealth - it suggests helping people with their education or enterprise for example...both of which clearly could bring about change in someone's life.
The idea of giving and reciprocity is also a powerful universal law...what we give out, we get back in return. If we give good we get good back or give bad and we then get back bad too. If we give money, opportunity and satisfy people's hunger...so too will we receive these things back to us in return.
So giving is not a one-dimensional thing, it is a virtuous circle in fact, we give, we receive, we give, we receive and so on.
When we give, everyone benefits more and that's a good principle to follow I think.
-Richard W J Brown