“The first time the thought of giving arises, act on it.”
A Buddhist teacher, Joseph Goldstein, suggested this as a way of working with the virtue of generosity. This resonates with me and I think of it often. On my birthday, I received an email from a friend with the subject heading: “Urgent – I need your help.” The words ‘act on it’ echoed in my head. I immediately asked what she needed.
She replied that she had COVID-19 and had a very sore throat, which meant she couldn’t call, but she needed help to get a $500.00 Visa card to her nephew on his birthday because he had cancer. I had no idea how to get a Visa card so told her that saying sorry I would not be able to help her. Right away, she let me know how: go to Walgreens and buy the Visa card, open it, take photos of it front and back. Send copies to her nephew at his number, saving the original card for her. The next day. she would send me a check.
When I write this out, it feels like I should have recognized sooner it was a scam, but that really didn’t cross my mind until Wendell said he wondered if it was really her.
I didn’t think it was a scam. The messages sounded so much like my friend, and I was so worried about her being ill. I remembered in the past how generous she has been with me. And all the while, Goldstein’s sentence kept coming back to me.
I hate going into stores these days and it was my birthday! “It’s not a scam,” I said to myself, “but I just can’t do it today. I don’t want to do it. She has a lot of friends, I bet she can find someone else to do it.” I emailed her saying how sorry I was and hoped she could find someone else to help her. I felt horrible at letting her down. I felt stingy, cold-hearted, and miserly.
A couple of hours later I received notice that she had been hacked, if I had received a request for money from her to disregard it – that she would never ask for money that way.
Thinking about this more, I realize that the urgency I felt to answer this request was due to a too-literal interpretation of Goldstein’s advice to “act on it.” I would like to think it was generosity that inspired me to such urgency. But more likely, I desired to rid myself of feelings of guilt and miserliness. I wanted to feel magnanimous instead. Freud isn’t the only one who understands subconscious drives. So do Nigerian scam artists.
IMAGE: Two pages from Jung’s glorious Red Book.
