Is our "care" motivated by guilt?

I was talking with a young business person about my humanitarian work and how to promote it successfully. He suggested I needed to understand that everyone who gives to humanitarian projects or organisations does so to feel less guilty.  We feel guilty for the personal power and ease we enjoy as those who are relatively privileged in the world when we are confronted with others suffering hunger and others things. He was suggesting that all successful humanitarian fundraising is about increasing that guilt so people give more to relive it!  We give enough to be able to continue to enjoy without our pleasure being spoiled by feeling guilty about it. He did not see this as a bad thing to use! He simply wanted to me understand this was the thing I needed to appeal to! He was saying we give to take away a negative, not because we really care!

I did not like his analysis. Yet I have to admit there is truth in this when I pay attention to my own motivation for the sacrifices I make. I certainly have, in past years, given to reduce guilt in precisely the way he described. I would freely enjoy my privilege while also giving something to most charities that asked for it. It is actually now that I have less and am needing to budget more carefully that my motives are becoming clearer. I do give out of discomfort with things I enjoy while others are suffering but not so I can continue to enjoy those things. Rather, if those enjoyments no longer feel right while my friends who live in poverty are suffering, I let go of those things. I do not try to live exactly as they live. That is neither possible nor helpful. However I do ask whether I enjoy things because I really need them or just out of habit and a sense of entitlement.  I no longer think of my income as mine to do with as I please. It is there for love. It is there to love others as I love myself.  

 This weekend I sold my sports car, my lovely little 2015 Mazda MX5 Roaster (manual and soft top of course). I replaced it with a Hybrid that was $12,000 less than I got for the sports car.  This money will, mostly, pay back money I have given to humanitarian work that was set aside as tax savings and for my own future planning. I have "borrowed from the future" to respond to some needs I couldn't see how I could afford to respond to. 

Not all those decisions were good decisions. A wise person has said, "Every 'yes' is a 'no'". When we cannot say "no" to human needs that we are faced with, that is a problem. We cannot relieve all human suffering.  Sometimes all we can do is be present with someone in suffering neither they nor we can change, Yet I could change these things by taking from money for my own needs. It was "my" money I thought. I had the personal power to make that decision. And so I did. Yet this was a weakness not a strength, a vice not a virtue.  This was, about my unwillinglness to be present to suffering when I had the personal power to take it away. This was not living in love because I did not love myself in these decisions. I said "no" to myself and "yes" to others.

When I put my car on "TradeMe" I cried. I had no idea I loved it so much. It really has brought me a lot of fun and joy, far more than I even thought driving a car could give. It looked very expensive and that embarrassed me. I don't like to be thought of as "rich". I feel shame associated with wealth. I know when I was really struggling with a level of poverty I did not think kindly of people who owned expensive cars, houses, yachts and so on.  Why? Is this "true" guilt (guilt because I am behaving badly) or "false" guilt? It is surely a good thing for my behaviour to change when I become aware I am living unjustly. However the shame I felt was all about other's opinion. I care far too much about what others think of me.

The past three years have been mentally and emotionally tough for me as I have transitioned from "Nicholas Ian Frater" to "Nicola Sian Frater". Coming out publicly as a trans woman was the easy bit. The really tough times was leading up to that decision. However the emotional and mental journey through the hormonal side a girl's puberty at age 64-66 has been rough. And it has triggered childhood trauma and taken me to some very dark places I almost did not survive. This is not an easy thing to go through while everyone is expecting you to have the maturity of a 66 year old!  And the HRT meds themselves can trigger serious mental and emotional instability.  

So my little sports car was both a distraction and a comfort through some of the darkest experiences of my life. That, I now realise, was a need. I should not have felt guilty about it. I did feel discomfort around the harm I was doing to the earth by driving a petrol driven car and enjoying its power and acceleration. We use most fuel when accelerating. Getting to the speed limit in the shortest time possible (and making some noise doing so) was one of the really fun parts of driving this little car. And I loved driving it around windy mountain roads So I would hop in and drive it just for the pleasure of driving it. 

It was also right to enjoy it for a time and right to let it go,  Now that I have sold my car I am very happy with that decision. It feels right that I enjoyed it for a time and right to let it go now and look back on that as a wonderful memory. 

Coming back to the young business person's analysis, I don't want to manipulate money out of wealthy people using guilt. This is not an "ends justifies means" situation for me. 

I do want to facilitate community with others who really desire to journey deeper into love love for those who are poor, really desire to live in love for self and others in a wholesome and mature way, to grow some friendships with people who are relatively poor and powerless, both in their own communities and in in our global community, and to learn the courage to say "no" and well as the courage to say "yes" both to self and others.