Please Give Your Opinion on Generosity

[Rick Inman]

We are doing a teaching on generosity this weekend, and I am looking for anyone and everyone's opinion on what it means to be generous.

What is a generous person? Do you think of yourself as generous? Do you know someone who is? Can you tell me a story about someone who did something generous for you? How about a time when you were generous? Any other thoughts on generosity?

Thank you for the help!!

 

[ScubaSteve]

Asking for an opinion on SubaBoard? Do you hear crickets yet because I was not aware there was any opinions out there .

I believe a generous person is a person that will give anything that they have to give even if it leaves them short (and this is not only money or materialistic things) and will never think about expecting anything in return. For the generous person, it just happens with absolutely no thought.

 

[TSandM]

I think asking about generosity on a diving board is a great place to get good stories, because divers are, in my experience, some of the most generous people I've ever known.

Here's a story: I took a friend, who is a newer diver, to the Edmonds Underwater Park to dive. When we got there, we discovered she had forgotten her gloves. I didn't have spares for her. We had two options: bag the dive, or go down to the dive shop a block away and buy her a new pair. (Driving home wasn't practical.) It seemed stupid to spend $50 on a pair of gloves for one dive.

At this point, the guy in the truck next to us comes over and asks, "Did you forget your gloves?" And we said yes, and he immediately offered, "Here, use mine." And I said, "But you're done diving . . . do you want to wait around that long?" And he said, "No. I'm from Montana and I'm headed home. You can mail them to me."

There's a generous spirit -- Wanting to help, and to share, with trust, unworried by the potential personal cost.

Look around any popular dive site, and you can see the same kind of thing going on. People are lending forgotten gear, or offering to buddy up with people whose buddies are no-shows. It's spontaneous, it's not calculated, it's heartfelt . . . It's generous.

 

[JenaLynn]

I so agree with you TSandM. One my fist day of diving for my cert my Mask kept flooding and flooding. A class had gotten out of the water and saw me sitting on te bench waiting for my buddy and asked if I was ok. THey were from another dive shop. I explained what happened and the dive teacher went to his truck and said he was done for the day but here, try on my mask. He went in the water with me and I tried on hs mask. It didnt work but he didnt have to do that. He wished me luck and the next day when I saw him with his class for the second day of diving the first thing he did was wak away from getting ready to check out my mask and give me pointers.

Generousity to me is when you give of yourself without even thinking and dont expect anything in return. It is the kindness in you heart tha pushes you to want to help in any way you can.

 

[drbill]

Am I a generous person? Certainly not in terms of money. Heck, I barely have enough to keep myself afloat (which is why I submerge so often). I work 24/7 at my business. The financial rewards are minimal, not enough to pay my bills.

Despite working so many hours, I am pretty generous with my time. I always try to help people when I can. There are the professional ways I do that... by offering insight for others about what they see when they dive. I don't get paid to do that, but adding value to the diving experiences of others is important to me.

I give time to friends in need. I have one friend who had a series of strokes years ago. Later she lost her golf cart and couldn't replace it. I often take her to the grocery store or to get her prescriptions filled, etc. Of course that's part of living in a small town.

Many of the activities I participate in do not involve any financial compensation. I enjoy giving of my time to others. I think I am pretty generous in that respect given how much of my personal time is filled with "work."

I also try to donate my products to good causes such as Mel Pasley's recent program to teach disabled veterans to dive. I created over 100 episodes of my 30-min "Dive Dry with Dr. Bill" public access cable TV show which involves a substantial time commitment but no compensation.

The reward to me is the satisfaction of knowing I have somehow helped others or improved the quality of their lives.

In the days when I had "real" jobs that compensated me well in excess of my needs, I donated to several causes which I believed in.