Bumper Stickers Around Town
The guy in the Apple store in Georgetown who showed me why I really wanted to walk out of the store with the IPad 2 had never heard the song “New Toy.” The year it came out, I was in London studying and being tragically hip; he was a year old give or take a few months. I suggested he find it on ITunes.
Three days of Ipad 2 ownership later, “New Toy” kept running through my head. Oh my god, and then I started hearing Nina Hagen infiltrating from the past. Was I really in New York when this song came out and kind of out of my mind? Yes I was. Does anything we experience ever completely fade away? Probably not, which is why the great yoga masters advise us to be careful what we bring into our consciousness, lest we establish new samskaras that draw us away from the light.
When I selected Oxfam to be the donee of the proceeds from my first Thanksgiving Day Yoga Fundraiser ten years ago, I took into account that its mission is to “create[] lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice,” which seemed to me deeply related to what I believe is the best aspect of the history and tradition of making a holiday of thanks giving (leaving aside the shadow side of the history). Last night, when I was writing the newsletter inviting all to come and join me for the fundraising class, I thought about whether some readers would wonder why the donee of the proceeds wasn’t being changed to the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders or other reputable organizations that are out in the field helping those known to us who are closer to home and are still suffering from the ravages of Hurricane Sandy.
Over the past few months, in ever increasing quantity as the elections approached, I received several emails a day and sometimes in an hour (and if I had been willing to answer the phone, calls) pleading for me to donate money and time. For some, it was asking again and again, even though or perhaps especially because I had given generously already. In the face of an unexpectedly large disaster, we cannot help but wish we could do something to help. Not surprisingly, I am feeling a little of what they call in the business “donor fatigue,” and I expect that many others feel the same. It is important, when faced with urgent cries for help, to remember that the preexisting calls on our resources have not gone away (newspaper reporting and the absence thereof notwithstanding). I do not question for a minute that those who are able to do so should share some resources with those whose homes and lives have been turned upside down by Hurricane Sandy, but it is also important to remember and continue to support the causes that are not today’s news.
