“Charity should be a secret, you can’t say out loud that you are doing it,” this can be heard both from the townsfolk and from public figures. Why are we often afraid to talk about charity? Just as they are afraid to pronounce the names of oncological diseases aloud, they are afraid to go to the doctor for a preventive examination? Actress Chulpan Khamatova, co-founder of the Podari Zhizn Foundation, reflects.
The opinion that one should not talk about one’s doing charity comes from ideas of modesty, from the fact that one should not stick out one’s virtues, but one must be restrained and modest. But then there is the question: what is virtue, how it is connected with the concept of norm. If we talk about the fact that helping another is not the norm, but something unusual, sublimely good, then, of course, we need to be silent about this.
But we believe that charity is the norm, and no one ever boasts of the norm, because what is the point of boasting about something everyday? They just calmly talk about everyday life. Therefore, to say that you helped someone is not boasting, but simply a statement of fact, so that someone else also has a desire to help and so that he knows that this help will reach those in need.
But as soon as people start talking about the fact that a lot of people involved in charity are promoting themselves on the grief of other people and trying to get some extra points for themselves, a bias in the perception of charity begins. Especially when talented and influential people say so — and those who believe in them begin to think the same way. Charity for them becomes even more chosen, unique. So we will never come to the conclusion that charity is everyday life, an integral part of life.
In the Western world, from early childhood, people are taught to be charitable, just as they are taught to brush their teeth and say «thank you.» Western people sometimes do not even notice that they are helping: you buy a toy in a store, part of the money will go to help someone; in another store you buy socks, and again transfer, without going into details, funds for a fund; then your company in which you work will transfer to charity the money that should have been spent on giving you some other unnecessary holiday calendar. Rather, people who do not engage in charity fall out of the social context, they are unique, they are single …
Our situation is different, and it will not change as long as there is a feeling of some kind of abnormality of charity, it doesn’t matter if this abnormality is with a minus or plus sign, as long as there are talks that it is impossible to report about it, that this is a protrusion of some kind of one’s own good qualities, that it is immodest…
Charity would not be needed if we lived in some kind of ideal world, where everyone without exception helps each other, where money is collected by itself, where all assistance is organized by itself. Then everything is fine, and, of course, there is no need to shout about anything, to sound the alarm. But we live in a different world, and nothing will be organized by itself.
In today’s situation, charity should be loud. The more people find the strength to say: “Yes, I helped, so what? So what? I just helped,” the greater the chance that charity will become the most common thing, and it will be possible to help more people. And then the next person who will say: “Yes, and I helped.” And on the 55th person, this topic will already subside on its own, because many help, the majority help, and there is nothing to hide it, and there is nothing to be modest, because there is no reason for modesty, just as there is no reason for boasting, for self-promotion.
All over the world such concept as reputation is highly valued. If the company has a reputation that it helps everyone, leads some kind of socially active lifestyle, and the next company also helps everyone, and the other company too, then it would never occur to anyone to somehow distinguish them from a number of others.
Charity education
As I said, charity in the West is taught from childhood. In America, for example, in kindergarten, “learning” takes place in the form of a game, with the help, among other things, of special brochures. In this pamphlet, a small cancer cell is drawn in the form of some kind of evil creature. And then this children’s book tells how this evil creature, cancer, begins to deceive healthy cells. And healthy cells are drawn like soldiers with shields, all kind, good. The pest tricks its way into the rear of the healthy cells and starts misbehaving there, and then it says what needs to be done in order to drive it back.
We are talking about a small book with bright pictures, and the child develops an absolutely normal understanding that anything can happen in life: you can cut your finger, or this can happen. And before the disease, our Russian horror no longer arises, the feeling that this is the end of life.
Further, other, more detailed stories (not only about oncological, but also about other diseases) are studied at school, starting from elementary grades, then middle school, then high school, where it also tells in more detail what kind of disease it is, how it reveals why it is necessary to love people who suffer from this, why it is necessary to hold all kinds of charity fairs. Once every two months, the children themselves organize all kinds of fairs, after which they transfer the proceeds to charitable foundations (which children decide for themselves). It becomes part of the school curriculum. Part of everyday life.
I can’t imagine that I come to any Russian school in our city and tell the children what cancer is. My parents will peck me that they dared to introduce the children to the “terrible topic”.
Look, in our society there is a clear relationship — a taboo on talking about diseases, a taboo on talking about charity. And we live as if we have neither death nor disease. But cancer is such a disease that nothing can explain today. You can lead a healthy lifestyle, you can be three years old, you don’t smoke, you don’t drink, you don’t have parents who don’t smoke, you don’t drink, but the disease still catches up. And about the disease, and how to deal with it, you need to know.
But we have a taboo in kindergarten age, a taboo in school age, a taboo in adulthood. Because of the taboo, women don’t want to go get tested for breast cancer. And instead of stopping the disease in the early stages, the citizens of our country often bring everything to the very last options, when nothing can help. It turns out the level of the Middle Ages, some kind of mystical attitude to the word «cancer». People think that not only can it not be heard, it cannot even be read, because as soon as you read it, you will immediately get sick.
It is clear that today cancer and AIDS are the most terrible unexplored diseases. But still, if you treat it differently, it is much easier to deal with them …
If people understood that modern medicine has already reached such a level that oncological diseases are treated in the early stages, and that it is not the disease that should be feared, but one’s own fear of this disease, then the situation would be completely different.
Therefore, for Americans, this is not a taboo, it is the same practically everyday problem that happens to many of their entourage — and in Russia too. Only in our country no one will say that he has cancer, because they will start looking at him askance, but there it is normal. Someone breaks his leg, someone gets cancer — these are all situations from which you need to get out.
So, the Americans raised their children in kindergarten, explained what kind of disease it is, why it is necessary to help, they explained it at school. And then they get people who begin to earn money themselves, and who no longer need to explain anything — they know that they need to help others. For example, the Alzac Foundation, with which we partner, raises $2 million a day, with an average donation of $21. Because there are families who donate, say, $30 to this fund every month, like clockwork. They helped more than once in my life, but every month, because only such help can be effective. They have an understanding that the state is not only the executive and legislative power, but also the people themselves. This, of course, really shocked me when I got acquainted with the American experience.
We asked: “What do you do with single mothers who have to leave work and take sick leave with their child for a long time? Sometimes there are situations (in our fund, for example) that mom has nothing to eat. She doesn’t even have money to buy food, let alone clothes, tickets, and so on.” To this they made round eyes and said: «We did not understand, repeat the question.» We repeated again, to which they asked: “But what about the social community — civil society? After all, this mother has relatives, housemates, neighbors down the street, neighbors in the city. That is, the American Foundation does not deal with such things, it only treats. Social assistance, social security is taken over by the neighbors, and this is in the order of things for them. We were told that they had never had a case when no one had sent help to their parents from the house in which they lived, from the street — and from any state of America.
It turns out that people have a high level of responsibility — for another, for a neighbor. And for myself, of course. You never know what will happen to you tomorrow, and in what situation you will find yourself.