A child is born to loving parents. He is born in a middle class family in a developing country with rising living standards of living. With his fresh innocence, he will soon experience the wonders of childhood and later the rigors of adulthood. Yet even at the moment of birth, he carries a debt.
It took nine months of often painful struggle to bring him into this world. That includes the physical toil of the mother before and during birth and the radical readjustment of the lives of the parents in preparation for the baby to enter the world.
But the debt has just begun to be counted. As the child grows, the parents spend an inordinate amount of time and money to ensure his childhood is as happy as possible. Once the child enters school, a social institution, an entire series of teachers pour their expertise in the child’s learning and grooming. As the boy matures, he freely benefits from available facilities, such as parks to libraries to roads, all of which came with substantial collective investment.
On top of the debt derived from people, he is actively taking from the environment as he grows. In our modern energy-intensive industrial economies, he consumes resources virtually every waking and sleeping moment. The fuel for his travel, the trees for his paper, the electricity for his lighting and more, all of his carbon footsteps must be added to the bill.
By the time he graduates college (a lot of people costs here as well), he is gearing for his first job and has effectively left the parental nest. In social terms, he is a free man, ready for a long and fruitful career. Assuming he managed to somehow dodge students loans, he can breathe easy.
But should he? Before he jumps headlong onto the corporate ladder, can he take a pause? Should he not take a second, a minute, a hour, to ponder over the inestimable bill that he has collected over the years, the investment in himself granted by Earth and humanity, all gleefully taken with no second guessing? If he did take the time to notice, his head may get dizzy for calculating all that has been spent to make him ‘independent’. Or whether repaying this debt is even possible.
Repaying the cost of existence
Muhammad Ali once said, “The service you do for others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.” And he meant it. We all carry on our shoulders the burdens of the sacrifices of all those generations of humanity that progressed and persevered, right down to our own parents who gave us an upbringing.
My experience with those drawn to service, whether it be volunteering, working in a non-profit or even working probono in their own industry, is that they approach it as a responsibility. They do not seem uniquely more altruistic or larger-hearted. They realize that their life situation has thrust upon them social duties which must be dutifully discharged and they proceed to do so without fuss.
My theory, largely unfounded though it is, is that we all carry an awareness on an innate level of just how fortunate we are to be alive. And how much collective input from Man and Nature it has taken to keep us going and grant us all sorts of privileges. So if at some point we do not ‘give back’, we are turning our back on our ultimate responsibility, our chance to repay that debt. And as we live longer, that debt owed stacks up before there comes a tipping point when we can longer ignore it.
Giving more than you take
A tactic often employed in coaching is the end of life question. As in, asking a coachee to imagine a time when they approach old age and getting him or her to reflect back on their own lives. The question is a refocusing one meant to put current life challenges and accomplishments in a wider perspective.
Following on with this idea, we can inquire: by the end of your life, did you consume more and take more from others than you ended up giving back of your own accord? Was your life a net benefit? Of course, this is an impossible calculus to truly know but raising the question is valid.
The reason this question is important is that it pushes back against the individualist tendencies of our current social order. These downstream currents push us along the line of thinking that each of us lives in a vacuum, and that you do well enough to maintain your own upkeep and that of your family. It tells us that communal service is but for a particular subsection of society who have free time for their quaint preoccupation.
Premodern traditional societies in many ways were far better in cultivating communal-giving instincts. They provided rituals and rites that marked the passage to adulthood through sacrifice and giving. Even the uber-rich of those older communities gained their social legitimacy through patronage rather than hoarding and showing their wealth.
Building a Legacy
As we approach midlife and beyond, our conscience will bother us more with these pesky questions of social responsibility. Living life for ones’ self only becomes draining after it becomes fulfilling. Quite often our response is to wait until retirement to begin to build our larger legacy, and then look to volunteer or start that foundation or sponsor that underprivileged school. It is logical enough to segment our life cycle this way, as career pressures can be too consuming to allow us to focus our attentions elsewhere.
There is an increasing number of people though who are transitioning into careers in which the most productive years of their life will be their legacy. Careers of social impact and dedication to a larger cause beyond the self. They have bucked the individualism of the day. As a coach, these are the sort of people who I find optimal to work with as they have already made that key decision to trade their most irreplaceable asset, their time, to giving back, and are only looking for guidance on how best to do so.
Going back to the initial idea, reflect now on your own roots. Consider your family, your community, your environment and all the forces around you that made your special existence possible. And ask yourself, when and how will you begin to repay your own debt?
(Article originally appeared at: https://saqib-m-sh.medium.com/why-we-must-give-back-bd62aebaf980)