I’m not a generous person. Well, I never mind treating my friends for some lunch or dinner sometimes, but I’m not used to giving some money to beggars and street singers. It’s like, “You have no money, not my business.”
Today I went shopping to Bintaro Plaza and it was raining when I was about to go home. As always, there were some kids—I think they’re still in elementary school—standing in front of the entrance, bringing umbrellas, offering the plaza visitors if they could walk them with their umbrellas.
I never forgot bringing my own umbrella so I didn’t need their help. There was one of them, a small skinny girl in shabby red T-shirt, that kinda reminded me of my sister. And when I walked through the parking lot to the public transportation stop, some steps away from the entrance, not knowing what got into me, I stopped. I flipped my umbrella. I walked back approaching the girl and asked, “How much is it to walk me to the public transportation stop?”
“Up to you,” she answered shyly. She looked surprised. I guessed she had already seen me walking away with my own umbrella but then I came back—what’s up?
“My umbrella is broken,” I made up a reason. So we walked together under her umbrella and had some chat about her school. She didn’t talk much, though. She even seemed to try to keep distance between us.
The public transportation stop wasn’t far, only about fifty meters from the plaza entrance. As I was gonna get on, I pulled out some money of my purse and asked her, “Enough?” and again, she said shyly, “Up to you.”
Either I fell for her naive expression or I was really stupid, I pulled out another sheet of money and gave it to her. It was as much as my table money in a day and suddenly, I got in a some regret to give it away. But immediately, when she said, “Thank you,” with a smiling face, the feeling just disappeared somewhere. I could feel her happiness, and I felt happy, too.
On the way home, I remembered something my friend, David, ever told me:
When you give things away, you lose them.
When you give happiness, you get double.
