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The Whole Heart
North Miami Beach, Florida Aug. 26. 2000 Aaron H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on issues, ideas and reflections on the times. Published now and
then. Opinions pro or con are welcome.
THE WHOLE HEART
I sometimes think we do things without putting our whole selves into them.
We only go so far as to lending half or some smaller part of our
heartedness. I know I sometimes go along with what other people want to do
just to be accommodating. I don't particularly think this is devious or
bad. It is just something that I and, I believe, most others do to get
through the day. The body is there, not the whole heart.
Take giving for instance. Calling it charity we give to others but not
with our whole heart. We can agree that nuns and missionaries do the
things they do with whole hearts. They invest their whole lives into what
they believe. Unselfishness is not an authentic human trait. Babies demand
to be served. People push to the front of lines. Being thoughtful takes a
lot of cultivation. It is not automatic.
Have the poor always been with us? Must this be so? There are those,
constrained by selfish wisdom, who do not give to the defeated and the
failed. Our economic theorists tell us that this is a hardscrabble world
and you better be prepared to fight or go down. Isn't it precious how there
are plans to rescue the powerful and monied when they stumble and fall.
Where is the concern for the lowly and unlucky? Pictures of tiny, shriveled
children whose ribs and large sorrowful eyes beg our help actually move us.
But why do those pictures never go away? Starvation and horrible deaths
still go on despite our good intentions.
Isn't it funny how we are attracted to routinized giving? We react
positively to calls to send the "underprivileged" to camp and when we hear
the tinkling bell of a fake "Santa" we throw coins into the pot.
Most of us give sporadically. Some, methodically. Would that we
consciously gave with our whole hearts all the time and not only sometimes.
Will we ever see the end of need? Would that be a good thing? What would
Darwin say about our going about doing good with whole hearts? What do you
say?
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