What My Mother Taught Me About Giving

She never once used the word generosity. I don't think she thought of what she did as generosity. I think she thought of it as just what you do when someone needs something and you have it.

I grew up watching her give things away in a manner so unceremonious that I didn't register it as anything notable until I was much older. Extra food packed for a neighbor without being asked. A child's school fees quietly covered for a family she barely knew, in a way designed specifically so they would never find out it was her. She did not perform this. She did not mention it afterward. If you had asked her about it directly, I think she would have been confused about why you were asking — to her, it wasn't a decision. It was just Tuesday.

I used to think this was simply her temperament, something she was born with that I either had or didn't. I have come to think it was something closer to a habit, built through repetition so early and so consistently that it stopped requiring thought. She gave the way some people clear their throat — automatically, without weighing it first.

I am not naturally like this. I want to be honest about that. My instinct toward generosity has, for most of my life, required a decision — a moment where I notice an opportunity and choose to act on it. Hers required no decision at all, because the noticing and the acting had fused into a single motion somewhere before I was old enough to witness it happening.

What I took from watching her, more than any specific lesson, was a kind of proof of concept. I had direct evidence, for my entire childhood, that this was possible — that a person could move through the world this way and not find it exhausting or remarkable, simply normal. I think that proof has done more for the Foundation than any principle I could articulate. I am not yet at the place she was. But I know the place exists, because I watched someone live there for years without ever once announcing it.

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