Becoming More Generous

Guest post author: Ethan Evans

I grew up as a bit of a selfish spoiled brat. Throughout my life, I’ve slowly become less so. I would never be so presumptuous as to say I have become generous. The best I can say is that I am less selfish and more generous.

In the hope that my journey may help others, I wanted to share it here.

I am the youngest of four children, and there are big gaps. My older brother and sister are 18 and 16 years older. My middle sister is 8 years older. This truly made me the baby of the family, born 8 years after the last of the other three.?

My parents had already raised one child all the way to adulthood (my brother was 18) by the time I was born. They were good parents, but they were tired of the work in some ways. I feel like as a child I really only had one rule, which was from my dad — “don’t break anything I have to pay for.” Other than that, my parents were glad to let me do almost anything that gave them peace. Most surprisingly to me now as a parent myself, this meant fixing me a completely separate meal if I did not want to eat what they and my older siblings were having. My mom apparently found it easier to make me whatever I wanted than to fight about it.

Since I was smart, I did well in school. Since my parents were older, they were later into their careers, so they made more money. Thus, we had a nice house and took nice vacations. Absent other information, I assumed that we were simply superior people, and that as the smart baby child, I must be the best. If you are getting the idea that I was not very likable, I agree with you! I do not even particularly like writing about this version of myself. But this story of the path to some humility has to begin with the selfishness of my early life.

You may have heard an analogy to the game of baseball, which is “he was born on third base and thought he had hit a triple.” This was me. I figured that people who didn’t do well in school or life were just dumb or lazy, or both, and as such deserved no better. This made selfishness easy — I’m a better person from a better family, I should have this and that.

What is the path home from such a nasty start?

Step 1: Being disliked.

Being judgmental and disdainful of others was a good way to make enemies. I had very few friends at school and I was beaten up in the hallways (this is before “bullying” was such a term as it is today) a number of times. I can see now I earned this treatment. But, it wasn’t until I was 16 or 17 that I started to really reflect on my part in the process.

Step one towards being a better person was to think about changing my behavior simply to have more friends and fewer black eyes. I started this change in earnest when I went to college, with the idea that I could start over with new people. In broad strokes, this worked. First, the people at college were more like me, including equally smart, so I was less likely to look down on them, and second, I did try to be nicer.

Step 2: No longer being the smartest.

As a child I had been among the smartest in my small town. At my college (Carnegie Mellon), I was immediately around numerous people who were clearly brilliant. Like many in my college class, I went from being in the top 5% or top 10% of a class in high school to being somewhere in the middle. From A’s to B’s and C’s.

Step two towards humility was no longer being the best.

Step 3: Starting to give.

By the time I left college, I had probably never given more than five dollars to any charitable cause. My attitude, as I have said, was that most poor people were lazy and deserved their problems.

I grew up an atheist. The story of my choosing Christianity is long and I’m not here to talk about religion. But, Christians tithe 10% of their earnings. Once I chose this path, I needed to start giving.

The interesting thing about giving is that if you have never done it, you have no idea how nice it can be to help someone else.

I started giving in earnest at about age 25. I’m now 53. A huge part of the change in my life comes from 28 years of giving.

Step 4: Seeing true need.

At about age 30, in 1999 or so, I went on a mission trip to the country of Uganda. We went to a rural town. It was my first exposure to what I will call true poverty. People wearing clothing with holes because they had nothing else at all.

While there are suffering people in America, a man from India I worked with at the time said, “I love America because here even your poor people are fat.” This may not be the kindest observation, but the contrast between the situations of the average struggling American, whom I had looked down on, and the average Ugandan, was marked.

Step four in my journey was seeing people who I could not say were just lazy. Having to accept that many people in the world are in bad circumstances not of their making and need help.

Step 5: Freedom to give.

As my life and career progressed, I started to have more to offer others. More money I could easily spare, yes, but also more expertise that others valued. There is no doubt that it is easier to give when you feel you can do so without serious cost to yourself. I’d like to tell you that I have become some truly selfless giver. Maybe that will be step six in my future.

For now, I will say that having the freedom to spend time and money helping others has made it a joy. Some part of me will likely always be the spoiled child who assumes every good thing should be mine. But at least in some ways that child has grown up and found true joy, more joy than I thought possible, helping others.

Why write all of this?

Because if you have not found the place where you love giving, where you are making someone else’s life better, I hope to inspire you to look for it. There are few greater joys. Work and career success are worthy goals, and I spend my days helping people achieve these goals. But, a life without the joy of also helping others is in my opinion incomplete.

If you can, work more opportunities to pay it forward into your lives. I write and coach to help more people have this “Step 5 Freedom.” When you get there, share it.