Testimony…
Listen for 7 min
If you expect something in return, don’t give, love is not “moral kidnapping” – Jiang Peirong Jiang Peirong
Here, I would like to share some of our experiences of leading our family to serve society with a sense of mission. I believe that after reading this, you will feel that you can also start small like us. When you reach our age, you will find that you have accomplished so many meaningful things!
How can we serve the community together?
01. I and Wei Qiandu believe that it is better to teach them to fish than to teach them to fish. We like to equip and train people instead of just giving money.
02. Whether it’s parenting, managing staff, or serving as a mentor, we want to influence others by being an example to meet the needs of the middle and advanced stages of Maslow’s pyramid of needs.
When we went to Gansu in 2004 to support teaching, we sponsored a student named Ye Wen one-on-one through the “Thousands of Villages” program. On the left is a photo of us with Ye Wen, and on the right is Ye Wen sharing his experience of social service with me on stage during a lecture in Xi’an, when he rushed from Gansu on an overnight train.
If we had only been to relieve Ye Wen, we would have just sent some money and gifts. In this way, he feels that he is a good person, and Ye Wen will also appreciate us, but he may always ask us for help in the future. You may have heard that some sponsored children do not know how to be grateful after college. The sponsors were so angry that they even went to court to get them to pay their tuition.
When we help others with a trading heart, sooner or later we will be disappointed because no one is perfect and everyone will let us down. We can only overflow love if we are filled with love first, then our spouse and children, and finally the people around us. Whether it is to community security guards, school teachers, or mountain children, we give love and share happiness without conditions. Although the superficial actions are all the same, the meaning is completely different, and therefore the results are completely different.
We and Ye Wen have also changed from the roles of relief workers and relief recipients to relatives and friends. His position has also changed from a weak person to a strong person who has the ability to help others, realizing that ability is not used to bully people who are weaker than us, but to help them, because the greater the ability, the greater the responsibility. What we want to give Yewen is not money, but dignity and hope.
03. We can also see another important principle from Ye Wen’s case – change is long, not a one-time. We are always greedy, overestimating what can be done in one year, but underestimating what can be done in 3 years. For our family, the tuition fee of more than 800 yuan a year is actually a very small number. We had the option to sponsor 10 children but knew we didn’t have the time and energy to reach and influence them consistently, so we invested our money in other charitable projects and then focused on impacting one student and one family in terms of tuition. Therefore, it is recommended that you do not be greedy when setting service goals, do not think about investing a lot of money or time at once, but start small and stick to it to become a great project.
We Chinese love big narratives, but few of us are willing to stick to one small thing. Since returning to China in 2003, we have insisted on doing small things in a low-key manner and maintaining a few relationships. So many of my books are published after writing 2,000 words a month. In the beginning, everyone around me would laugh at me for being silly, why not use my education and fame to do more things that are larger, more profitable, and more popular? Why not use some hype to make the book sell a little better and make yourself more famous? But it turns out that insisting on doing small things and doing big things with a bang and then disappearing, the former is far more effective than the latter, so don’t underestimate small goals and small things. When you stick with it for 10 years, this little thing becomes a great thing.
04. If one person does not go far, a family can go far. Similarly, if one family does not go far, several families can go far. I remember helping a begging family in Los Angeles when we were young. The black couple had 4 children, the baby was diapers and the family had no money to eat. When we went to see them at the motel, we took pity on the children and wanted to help the family. We gave them $50 to buy diapers and food for the week. The next day, while we were having dinner with friends, we saw this father begging at a nearby supermarket.
We went over to ask him how the $50 ran out so quickly and found that they had been hungry for a long time and didn’t know where their next meal would come from, so they went to eat a steak right away with $50, spending the entire week. We understand why the family has been reduced to such a lack of life skills. So we made an appointment with two other couples to help the family so that they could live independently. One couple helped them buy a very old car, another couple helped this husband find a job, and our couple rented an apartment for them, and helped him learn to manage money for Qian. If three families had helped this black couple alone, we would all be exhausted. A year later, they were not only able to live independently but also became our friends.
Now my eldest son, Kevin, is also helping homeless people with friends. What I found super interesting was that the friend who helped the black couple buy a car became very interested in homeless people. They created a real estate development company, developed an upscale apartment on a homeless street in downtown Los Angeles that no one wants to go to, and incidentally developed the surrounding supermarkets and shops. Because the location was close to nearby office buildings, house prices rose so much that all apartments quickly sold out at high prices. But when my friend developed the apartment, he set aside 1/4 for homeless families, so that they could receive life counseling and start over. By helping others, the project also made him a billionaire.
So don’t make service something you need to do away from your family, but something you do with your kids. If your spouse doesn’t have time to accompany you right now, you can go with other couples with children to live a plumbing life. You will find that helping other people’s children will make you more grateful, more considerate of your family, more responsible, more humble, and feel more meaningful in life.
In fact, pride and inferiority are two faces built on the self. Humility is a healthy form of selflessness, and serving others is the way to cultivate humility.
05. We believe that all people are equal, regardless of dignity or inferiority. As long as we have a humble heart, a willingness to learn from others, and a habit of reflection, we will grow. The recipient of help should not benefit us in vain, so he should be grateful to us and inferior to us. The biggest beneficiary of serving others is us, not others, and we grow in the process of serving others. Like the above case, who benefits the most in the end? Although this black family was helped, I think it was actually our 3 families who benefited the most.
06 . Only sound altruists have the confidence and security to make themselves smaller and smaller and make their children, their employees, and their service recipients stronger and stronger. If the original family leaves us some shadows or unhealed injuries during our growth, we need to raise the “child” in our hearts and heal those wounds.
We don’t want anyone to become dependent on us, but rather to be a springboard for someone else’s growth and success. We have accepted help from others, healed some of the wounds of childhood, got out of the limitations of our thinking, and learned to respect and treat ourselves kindly. I hope you can treat the supervision team as such a “second family” and as a base for your healthy growth and change. This process is very long, I hope everyone will not be in a hurry and continue to walk together.
So, don’t be stressed when discussing how to serve others. When you are capable, it is natural to find a way to serve others. Never force it, and don’t force it, otherwise, you will soon fall into resentment and self-pity, and the cup will soon be empty. Start by serving your family, neighbors, co-workers, your child’s teachers, other parents, and the community, and start with one person so you don’t run out of your time and energy.
07 . Our Chinese culture is particular about “human debt”, but I hope that everyone can pay attention to “love debt”. Human debt is to reward others, and there is an element of transaction in it, which can also become a kind of moral kidnapping. The debt of love is born of gratitude, an unconditional giving that gives us true freedom of mind. Giving is not for reward, but because we have been beneficiaries and are willing to pass on the benefits we receive gratuitously. If we can free ourselves from all kinds of unrealistic expectations and serve others unconditionally, we can truly enjoy the joy of service.
