Resources Not Deficits: Using What We Have

It’s all well and good to talk about getting rid of a scarcity mentality, but let’s face it.  I don’t have enough to build a community, host constantly, remember the names of every person I’ve ever met, or remember to bring a casserole to every new mother or struggling person I know.  It can just be too much.
I would argue that is why we need to be in community, first and foremost.  If we use our connections to each other, we do have the resources, they’re just currently not allocated properly.  For example, I have energy and motivation to plan, but you might have a house big enough to host.  Another person might have the money to buy food and feed people but need help with time for cooking.  But before we can start talking about practical solutions to real scarcity problems, we need to get our brains to stop seeing what we don’t have and start seeing what we do.
When I was studying social work, I veered toward figuring out how to get money to the right places, but we all took classes on everything.  Social work has a not so great history in this country. It’s actually a really interesting one as there were two schools of thought that were going head to head right up until World War I, when the one school of thought – run by Jane Addams and the Hull House – aligned themselves with pacifism, which basically meant they were seen as traitors and their influence on the emerging field of social work waned.  It’s a shame as we now have returned to a lot of their basic tenets. (and she was the first American woman to earn the Nobel Peace Prize!)
Anyway, as I was in school, the profession of social work (and psychology) was integrating new research that emphasized what people had rather than what they didn’t.  So, looking at someone who was addicted to alcohol, self-harming and living with their parents, you might say, “Hey, this person has a family, a place to live, and financial resources to meet basic needs.  How can we use those things to tackle these other problems?”  I never used those skills for individual people, rather using them to help programs that were often terribly underfunded and struggling.
But when it comes to reckless generosity, a huge part of it for me is to stop focusing on the gaps and start focusing the resources we already have.  When we are all generous with what we have, there’s more than enough to go around.  Yeah, you may not be the best cook, or have the best house, or have the most money.  But you have something.  How can you give that unique skill or resource today?  

Serenity DillawayComment
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