every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
generosity
"well, yeah," you might say, "each of us appreciates generosity when it comes to us!" yes, although that's not what I meant. but the thought did begin that way. in a workshop the other day, we were characterizing poets in Los Angeles. It wasn't the point of the exercise, just a tangent we had wandered into. and I was struck first with how generous the poets in Los Angeles have been to me. and I quickly saw that it wasn't specifically to me, that my experience of Los Angeles poets is that they are generous - with what they know about poetry, with how it works for them individually, with what doesn't work in poetry, and generous also with what they know in life, or in living in Los Angeles. which made me wonder about people in general and I almost laughed at myself. no, I would not characterize us humans as generous, but many of us are generous, even in the most horrific situations. a soldier crawls out into enemy fire and drags a buddy back to a medic. a woman provides water to soldiers even though another troop of them ravaged her village. during a brutal "ethnic cleansing", a reporter thinks of and creates a way to re-introduce empathy to the thinking of both groups - and it works! a nurse cares for the sick and dying despite knowing the disease is highly contagious. not all of us can give that willingly, but some of us can. it almost makes up for what we humans normally do.
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