A fish doesn’t know what water is because it sees and experiences everything through the medium of water. Like a fish in water, we swim in the medium of our attitudes: WE are this or that sort of person. We are kind, generous, animated, quiet, fearful, grouchy, stingy, nice, not very nice, relaxed, anxious. We think life is good, people are good. Or we think life is a struggle and people are not to be trusted. And so on. ….. It’s hard to see ourselves accurately. Our attitudes distort the picture.
Generosity confronts and softens our basic attitudes. To practice it is to appreciate the natural abundance of being, the inherent generosity of time and space, and the ongoing unfolding of life. These are exquisite gifts. Life itself is generous. Life is always making more life. Life is abundant and expansive, never stingy or small-minded.
The practice of generosity eventually effects a basic attitude shift toward the recognition that we are living creatures who share in life’s great abundance, freedom, and energy. So we always have possibilities. We always find a way, no matter how or what, to further our life.
We just have to figure out how to stop getting in our own way.
Norman Fischer
