Dear Hope Nation,
[Trigger Warning: This letter contains potentially distressing material. Readers who have benefitted financially during the COVID-19 pandemic may wish to avoid that annoying sting to the conscience. Even those who have not benefitted, but who have maintained their financial stability may find their charitable impulses unusual and overwhelming.]
If you’re reading (or writing) this, congratulations. We are among the fortunate, the lucky, the living. Most people aren’t living, having died long ago, or a while ago or yesterday. Raise your juice glass to the day, and toast another moment of life. Be overwhelmed with gratitude, and enjoy that feeling.
Wasn’t that nice, allowing gratefulness to flow out of you? It’s a funny thing but gratitude is like a spiritual perpetual motion machine. Once you’ve begun the process, it continues to animate your existence, transforming every interaction and each situation—until you stop it.
One surefire way to restart that gratitude pump? Donate money to an organization or nonprofit you support and believe in. Since I’m director of Hope for New Hampshire Recovery, I am duty-bound to include Hope as a potential target of gratitude, but that’s not the purpose here. Personally, I donate to Hope, along with a half-dozen other charities, and I know that I feel a rush of gratitude each time I write a charity a check (Reality Check: I haven’t written a check for anything in I don’t know how long, but saying “each time I enter a credit card number or PayPal info” doesn’t have the same ring.)
If you’ve gotten through COVID-19 without losing your job . . .
If you’ve actually made out financially, by keeping your job and getting a government stimulus check . . .
If your grateful for your recovery and want to increase that gratitude . . .
Please check out NHGives, a 24-hour marathon of giving that starts tonight—June 9—at 6 pm and goes on for the next 24 hours. If you give as soon as NHGives opens, your donation of up to $1,000 will be matched by the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation (NHCF), the folks who have made possible the Meeting Owl technology powering Hope’s reopening. NHCF has earmarked $250,000 in matching funds.
While you can give to any number of wonderful charitable organizations in the state, I’ll be giving to Hope at this website– https://www.nhgives.org/organizations/hope-for-nh-recovery?fbclid=IwAR1BdfUyM-Qo7OdDrN4WuVIvZ61XYkT8j7EIUbgIdjCP-mRoY6-1DvXkYAk. No, I’m far from a wealthy man, but I am a grateful one—grateful for my recovery, grateful for Hope and grateful for each of you. I’d be plum tickled, with my gumption tank filled, to have Hope Nation outgive me, but I know I’ll recharge my gratitude whatever others decide to do.
Please consider making a donation to any charitable organization. It’ll make you feel better. Please consider buying a few extra canned goods and throwing them in the food pantry collection basket at your grocery. Please consider feeding the donation basket a five or ten instead of a single dollar at the next recovery meeting you go to.
Please consider jumpstarting your gratitude.
You matter. I matter. We matter.
Keith