Limitations of Generosity

We cannot help absolutely everyone

(image from Priscilla Du Preez — unsplash.com)

For a very long time, I have been passionate about helping other people with things in which I am proficient. These include but are not limited to — tutoring, proofreading, critiquing, etc.

Normally, my friends and other people who know of me consider me to be “generous” and for the longest time, I have accepted that compliment. I tried to embody that label to the point that it wanted to break me.

Don’t get me wrong, even now, I am still passionate when it comes to contributing in any shape or form but I am not as intense as I once was. By intense, I mean, absolutely disregarding my well-being for the sake of helping as many people as possible.

I had thought that I was this superhero who was always ready, willing, and able to help everyone around me. But that could not be further from the truth.

To dive deeper as to the scope of my “generosity,” it’s important to note that I am a student-leader. I am usually nominated and voted or I volunteer to be in a leadership position most of the time.

A lot of my colleagues find me to be strict yet reliable when it comes to my job as a leader. Outside of my duties as a student-leader, I also love tutoring my friends in mathematics or any subject that they may struggle with. And since I was known to be this “generous,” a lot more people were messaging me and requesting if I could assist them with their worries. I would accept every single one of them.

(image from Nubelson Fernandes — unsplash.com)

To me, it is not wrong morally to be as helpful to others as much as you possibly can, but it gets draining really quickly. My belief that I am capable of helping every single soul is misguided because I had once thought that refusing to help automatically equals selfishness.

It took me a while before I could finally reconcile with the fact that choosing myself from time to time does not make me any less generous than what people perceived me to be.

Ever since I gained more responsibilities, I had less time to tutor my friends, less time to assist them in their work, and less time to provide for a large group of people.

However, even with the guilt that I felt, without telling my friends that I was feeling a certain way, they did not really treat me any differently. They still liked me and did not demand my time for them right away.

(image from Austin Kehmeier — unsplash.com)

I’m reminded of what our former College Dean told me “It is alright to be willing to help as many as we can, but it is important to remember that we cannot help absolutely everyone.” And he embodied what he said whole-heartedly.

This is not necessarily a lesson that I learned this College but it’s definitely a lesson I was able to apply to its fullest extent. One of the biggest realizations from this is that in the process of not giving myself time and focusing on just being helpful to others, I would end up crashing down which will make me unable to help others.

However, if I had at least some time for myself, I would have sufficient recovery time to be able to help more people moving forward.

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Thank you very much for reading one of my comeback articles! A lot of my upcoming articles will have a similar vibe. A similar story to this one might be this article about academic ego. Check it out if you have the time.