It surprises me how the expectation or obligation on us to give can cut across cultures: rich men’s foundations; collecting tins by tills; and the ancient Jewish core tradition of tzedakah – a religious obligation to perform charity (regardless of your own financial standing) and which a twelfth-century scholar Maimonides fleshed out and categorized, from the least honourable when donations are given in a spirit of resentment, to the most honourable when someone gives an interest-free loan to a person in need, forms a partnership with him, or gives him a grant or job so that the person no longer has to rely on others. But why do we give at all? What makes us want to share that which is ours with others? Toward a Meaningful Life, a book by Rabbi Simon Jacobson based on the teachings of the Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson (the world-famous Jewish spiritual leader), reminds us that the key to understanding charity is appreciating that it is a gift not just to the receiver, but to the giver as well: ‘The need to be charitable is one of the most fundamental human needs; just as we need food and protection and love, we need to share what has been given to us.’
Good deed no. 56: made a £1 donation to the Dream Team bucket lady in M&S. (Dream Team grants the dreams and wishes of sick, disabled and terminally ill children.)
Saturday, 26 February
We took the children along to see The Wizard of Oz at the Palladium. My daughter sat on the edge of my knee gazing up at the technicolour stage as if she had never seen anything so true and wonderful in her entire life. Even the middle-aged chap sitting next to us turned to me in the interval and commented how absorbed she was, and when Dorothy threw the bucket of water over the Wicked Witch of the West and melted her, my munchkin girl lifted up her arms and cheered. The show even had a message for me in it. Having been revealed as a fraud, the Wizard of Oz is rewarding the friends as best he might, and to the Tin Man he says: ‘Back where I come from, there are men who do nothing all day but good deeds. They are called phil … er … phil … er … [trying to say ‘philanthropists’] yes … er … good-deed doers.’ He tells the Tin Man that their hearts are no bigger than his, but they have one thing the Tin Man doesn’t – a testimonial. So ‘in consideration of your kindness’, he announces, ‘I take pleasure at this time in presenting you with a small token of our esteem and affection. And remember, my sentimental friend, that a heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.’ And he gives him a clock. Perhaps after my year of good deeds, I could have a clock too.
Good deed no. 57: gave £1 to a bucket collector for an Indian charity.
Sunday, 27 February
Travelling is difficult in terms of good deeds, unless you are driving, when I suppose you could keep letting other cars in ahead of you, although I imagine eventually that would lead to road rage and you would have to kill someone.
We stopped at Peterborough services for lunch and I positively leaped on a man with yet another bucket collecting for the Ronald McDonald house charities and gave him £1. (The charities support families with children in hospitals.) ‘Mazel tov,’ I said. He looked pleased but slightly taken aback at my keenness to donate, and rewarded me with a plastic-wrapped air freshener in the shape of a small swinging house. The air freshener was health and safety gone mad. The size of a folded-up tissue, it had a total of eighteen instructions and warnings written on the back. Who knew air fresheners could be so dangerous? My personal favourites were ‘Hang freely so that product does not interfere with or obscure the driver’s clear view of the road or control of the vehicle’ and ‘If swallowed seek medical attention immediately’.
I was tempted to swallow it round about the time the Saab’s big end went and the engine ground to a complete bloody halt. My big end went years ago and I am just about reconciled to that, providing I never look at my rear view in a full-length mirror, but I was not reconciled to the Saab deteriorating in the same way, even if it has done 156,000 miles.
We had to wait the best part of an hour and a half to be ‘recovered’; the car was then attached to a tow-truck and we spent three and a quarter hours in the back of the van banging along before we arrived in Northumberland at around 9.45 p.m. The only good thing about the experience was our rescuer, who was a Sikh called Dave. As soon as I clambered out of the darkness by the side of the road and up into the truck, I asked him whether he would like to overnight with us, bearing in mind the time he would otherwise get home, and he looked touched but said he would take a break and he would be fine. Courtesy of Dave (or Hardave), I now know more about Sikhism than I had thought possible, including the fact Sikhs wear the five ks: kesh (uncut hair), a kangha (a small comb), a kara (a steel or iron bangle around their wrist), kachha (cotton breeches) and a kirpan (a sword worn in a sheath). I know so much, I am virtually a Sikh myself. Then of course there is the turban. Long hair is combed, tied in a topknot then covered, which acts as a sign of disciplined holiness, as does the comb worn under the turban; the bangle is a reminder of infinity and God; the breeches represent sexual restraint; while the sword represents the call to uphold justice and protect the weak. Dave’s dad used to starch his turban for him when he was younger, so that once the starched cloth had been wrapped around his head and the ends tucked in, it effectively ‘set’ and Dave could lift it on and off more easily. Now he’s a grown-up, he told me proudly he can do it himself in a couple of minutes. Unfortunately, Dave wasn’t wearing his turban in the van, only a woolly hat.
It is strange, though, how I keep running into the idea of good deeds being important in life: Dave volunteered the information that concern for others is central to Sikhism and that Sikhs believe good deeds are integral to a good life. Not that Dave made it easy to do him a good turn – he wouldn’t even let me give him supper or a cup of tea when we got home. But as the rear lights of his tow-truck disappeared back into the darkness, I thought how he was indeed living a good life: finding the lost, rescuing the needy, bringing them home. Do those who believe in the critical importance of doing good for their fellow man carry that belief through to the choice of their job? I find that uplifting, that those in jobs that heal us or teach us or rescue us aren’t just taking the pay cheque at the end of the month, but that every day they walk the walk with or without a turban and a sword at their side.
Good deed no. 58.
Monday, 28 February
Everywhere I look there are good deeds in faith systems. Not just in Christianity, not just in Sikhism, but in Buddhism, Islam and in Judaism. In Judaism, strictly speaking, a ‘mitzvah’ is a commandment and there are 613 mitzvot set out in the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) – some of which are positive and some of which are negative. Loosely, however, a mitzvah is also a good deed. A deed which might be charity to the poor, or inviting a hungry person to your home, going to a funeral or visiting the sick. My mitzvah of today is that I have checked on my neighbour’s leaking toilet, mopped it out, and I’m about to ring her to tell her she needs a plumber. Maybe I am not a Sikh, maybe I’m a Jew. In any event, someone should tell these religions what they have in common: it would save us all a lot of trouble.
Sikhism is not only big on good deeds, it is also big on karma. I know about karma not least because according to SikhiWiki (a Sikh version of Wikipedia), ‘One’s actions in this life will have a direct influence on the type of life now and in your next existence.’ Surely then, after sixty-odd good deeds (and that is sixty-odd mitzvot if G–d turns out to be Jewish, and if I do too), I could catch a bleeding break, because what do I do this afternoon when picking up the children from school in the Ratmobile? Drive over an old ‘Flood’ road sign bent and hidden in the rutted mud as I do a U-turn in the entrance of a field. I tried hard to pretend it wasn’t happening, but there was a distinct dragging and a scraping of metal as I edged back up the country lane to the school. When I clambered out of the car, I could see the bumper and two-thirds of rear moulding hanging off the back. I am not impressed by karma.
Good deed no. 59.
Tuesday,
1 March
Good deed no. 60: arranged for my Leeds University friend to advise the media student on study skills, ringing the student and giving her the academic’s number and instructions to call.
THE EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGIST
So why does anyone do a good deed? Because it’s not just me out here. Admittedly, we are under pressure from our culture and from religious conviction. Scientific research indicates health and happiness benefits may be triggered by helping others, too. But the plot thickens, because there may also be an evolutionary pressure on us to do good. Evolution can be looked at in terms of genes, individuals and groups, and for many biologists, doing good for others is about successful reproduction, and not so much about the glow of satisfaction we might get from having done the right thing. In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins argues there is a pay-off at the level of the gene for apparently altruistic behaviour. In other words, an act of self-sacrifice by one organism is worth it if the benefit is greater to the other organisms carrying the same gene (dying to save ten close relatives would do it). Kinship, then, explains a lot – as can reciprocity, where you can expect a favour in your turn, and there is plenty of evidence of such animal altruism – not just the vampire bats but among birds and monkeys and social insects. Of course, I am more interested in my fellow man than any ant, and humans behave altruistically to their kin and to those who help them, but I already know they do more. Why?
Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford University, says altruism is one element in something academics refer to as ‘prosociality’, or cooperative behaviour and attitudes – the idea of behaving generously towards other people at some cost to yourself, which enhances the cohesion of social groups. And the argument is that this generous behaviour has evolved – sound of drum roll – because of the benefit there is to humankind in the maintenance of that social cohesion. As Dunbar said, ‘It might be one of the reasons primates are such a successful group of animals in evolutionary terms. It has given us an evolutionary edge.’ In order to survive predators, to survive at all, to successfully reproduce, we work best together.
It is interesting to think an evolutionary compulsion to do good might run through humankind so that humankind itself benefits. I tell Dunbar that from my experience, leaving the species to one side for a minute, there regularly appears to be an immediate return to the good-deed doer herself – the ‘helper’s high’, a sense of satisfaction, the feeling that one is necessary, or simply being thanked. He mentions oxytocin, a neurohormone which makes you more trusting of others and more generous towards them. ‘If everybody behaved selfishly, we wouldn’t be able to maintain the kind of societies that humans do, and that would have had a major impact on our evolutionary history. In order to have those kinds of societies, people have to behave courteously and in the interests of the other person. For that to happen, you have to have motivations which pat you on the back. There has to be reward or you wouldn’t do it.’ So the rewards too may all be part of some evolutionary pattern. Theoretically then, we are wired (and culturally encouraged) to feel satisfaction when we do good which persuades us to do good again, and we are wired (and culturally encouraged) to express gratitude when good is done to us thereby persuading the good-deed doer to do it all over again. Clever, huh?
Not everybody does do it of course, Dunbar warns. There are ‘free-riders’ who benefit from others being willing to sacrifice their own interests – benefiting twice over by not having to make a sacrifice themselves while at the same time profiting from the sacrifice of others. And their return can be enormous, but with too many free-riders, society collapses. I don’t want to be a free-rider. I prefer the idea that with my twopenn’orth of good deeds, I might help the whole of humanity slog on a while longer, maintaining the social contract, successfully propagating mine and others’ genes, doing what needs to be done.
Wednesday, 2 March
When I remember all the times my children have embarrassed me, farting in crowded cafés, or the time one of them banged his head on the pavement repeatedly because I wouldn’t let him buy a bag of crisps, I blush scarlet. Then there is today, when I sent my daughter to school in a baggy pair of her brother’s stripy grey Y-fronts, complete with a little hole for a boy’s willy to peep through while he piddles. I had no choice – behind my back she had outgrown all of her pants, and every time I tried to put her into a pair she squeaked, ‘Too tight, Mummy’ in protest. She did complain that the elastic on the Y-fronts was loose and they were falling down, but I bundled her into stripy woolly tights, assuring her the tights would hold the Y-fronts up. In my defence, I don’t make a habit of putting her in boy-knickers. Just today. I knew she didn’t have gym, so I figured it was safe enough. I had forgotten ballet.
Lily took her to ballet along with Ellie, which meant Lily had to supervise changing them. Just in case she was considering tactfully not noticing the boy-knickers, my daughter pointed them out with a helpful ‘Look what Mummy made me wear’, which would be why when Lily brought her home, she handed me ten pairs of brand-new girly knick-knacks in pastel shades with sparkly hearts in plastic envelopes with poppers. According to my daughter, the Y-fronts fell down ‘577 times, Mummy’ at school. Lily slipped out to a supermarket during the ballet class to buy the little-girl pants. ‘It’s swimming tomorrow,’ Lily reminded me, patently thinking I would have sent my daughter back out tomorrow in another pair – or possibly the same pair – of her brother’s pants, leaving her open to public ridicule in the changing room. I really wasn’t. Bloody-do-bloody-gooders.
Good deed no. 61: gave someone who was lost the directions to a neighbour’s house.
Thursday, 3 March
Breathtakingly good idea when I was driving back from M&S in Berwick, having gone shopping for a nice tea for the children: encouraging people to give to charity in their own homes by installing their own little charity bucket, that is to say an empty jam jar that they fill with loose change. We can campaign under the banners ‘Join the Jam Jar Army’ and ‘Ditch the Change’ or ‘Let’s Change’ or ‘A Jam Jar for Change’. If you collect more than £3 you could be a Blackberry in the Army, over £5 a Strawberry, over £7.50 a Raspberry, and over £10 you could be Lemon Curd (although, personally speaking, I find lemon curd sickly). The first collection would be for the hospice, but perhaps I could roll it out nationally and, if you keep collecting, maybe after ten jam jars you could be a ‘Star in the Jam Jar Army’ and you could get a real pot of jam with a gold star on top. There is a chance I am on to something, although I admit there is also a chance I am losing the plot.
Good deed no. 62: took Lily’s children after school while she worked.
Friday, 4 March
I want my money back on the alleged health benefits of good deeds. I had to go down to Newcastle for a meeting with a consultant about what to do regarding the migraines. The hospital is only small but I still managed to get lost, so I stopped by a desk and opened my mouth to ask directions, and the woman behind it said to me, ‘Cosmetic?’ Seriously? On my way in, I had passed a poster for their cosmetic surgery and weight loss centre. I resisted saying, ‘Do I look like I need cosmetic surgery?’ on the basis she might have said, ‘You certainly do. Next turning on the left, madam.’
She wasn’t to know that the last time I met with the consultant he mentioned Botox as a treatment option. At the time, part of me thought, ‘You have to be kidding,’ while the rest of me panted, ‘When? When?’ I went off the idea big time today as he talked me through what it involved when you have it for migraine. Injections in the forehead – fair dos; but you also have injections around the skull, down the neck and in the shoulders – eeeeeeurgh. Plus it is around five times the dosage you have for a cosmetic procedure. Plus he had only done it three times before because it has only just been licensed. ‘I’m happy with the pills,’ I said.
My chance to do my good deed came at the multi-storey car park. A bunch of glossy, sweet-smelling Geordie girlies were stalled in f
ront of the ticket machine. They were probably in their late teens (unless they were Botoxed of course, in which case they were in their fifties and I just made a big mistake). The machine wouldn’t take the driver’s ten-pound note and they only had three pounds in change when they needed five. They stood there chirruping at each other about what to do and how this shouldn’t happen, in the way you do when you are young and puzzled that life isn’t turning out the way it should. So I gave them £2. They thanked me very politely, and as they moved off through the swing doors and into the car park they were still chirruping about what a nice woman I was. By rights, I should have left these foolish virgins standing, advising them to be better prepared for what might come their way, to think laterally, seize the initiative and go get some change, which would have been an infinitely more valuable life lesson for them all. Now they will turn out to be passive believers who think things will turn out dandy if you wear enough mascara and keep hoping for the best.
Good deed no. 63.
Saturday, 5 March
Diane has two degrees: one from Newcastle University and one from Cambridge. I once said to her, ‘If I had to use just one word to describe you, I’d say “intelligent”. What word would you use for me?’ and she said, ‘Quirky.’ Quirky? Not clever, not funny, not good in bed – admittedly she wouldn’t know the last one, but she might hazard a guess. I’m not even sure you can build a friendship on quirk. I am pretty sure quirk is like quicksand – you think you are OK right up to the moment it slurps you down and smothers you; maybe, being quirky, it would tell you a joke before you died. My favourite joke of the moment:
A Year of Doing Good Page 7
