In some respects I was fortunate that I grew up in a family that was really poor. I got to experience the benefits of the generosity of others. I think that that actually helps you to develop certain empathy because you have, y'know- I grew up on food-stamps, and in subsidized housing and sometimes homeless and we were on line at soup kitchens, y'know, we had really no money at times. And there were times when the kindness of strangers made a big impact on us. I remember one time we were sleeping in a tent on the side of the road and somebody came and they had a pick-up truck and were just, like, “Get in”, we got in and they brought us to a motel, they paid it for us to be in the motel and they gave us a gift certificate for Abdow’s Big Boy. I was, I think, seven years old at the time and that was such- I remember distinctly, we had a 14$ gift certificate for Abdow’s Big Boy and for us that was so much money and it was like, such a feast. And for the person who gave it to us it meant-, y'know, they had to take an hour of their time to do what they did for us and they gave us probably in the end 50$ between the motel and the 14$ Abdow’s Big Boy and for them it might have not been a lot of money but for us - I’m still talking about it, 35 years later. It made an huge impact on this little family who was struggling on the side of the road. And there were a couple of other events like that in my childhood that have stuck with me, but in general, I think the fact that we struggled and that other people helped us was actually lucky for me in the long run, because it showed me that, yknow- I think that if you have never experienced a real need like that, real material need, it might be little harder to be empathetic or to want to help other people. I think that we all have that empathy in us, though, that we all-, there’s nobody out there who doesn’t feel good helping somebody else in need. For some reason, though, I think that we often feel like we need some sort of license to do those things, we need some excuse for it and the truth is we don’t need an excuse. You can go through life doing that all the time as a practice, y'know, as a reminder to stay present. It’s a good thing to take note of the people who might be suffering around you and see if there’s anything you can do to ameliorate their situation. [x]
