GIVE OR TAKE
- Mar 4
- 3 min read
By Jessica Breazeale
Do you take more than you give or give more than you take?
Humanity seems to have lost care and compassion (collectively and individually). We’ve learned survival mode all too well and at a great cost. It seems like we are all trying to “survive” and society has bought into the lie that it’s “survival”.
Somehow, somewhere in society, we have bought into the lie that we are the center of the universe. Humanity seems to care very little about how our wants, desires, preferences, and choices affect other people and their families and their situations.
With our mouths, we say that we care about others, but our actions tell a very different story. Our actions tell the story that we are all about ourselves - survival of the fittest. Is this the way that Christ wanted us to live? By no means.
I recently watched an incredible movie called “The Hate U Give,” based on a novel by Angie Thomas, and its overall theme is learning to find your voice, use it, and fight the cycle of poverty. Watching this movie got me thinking, do we give more than we take, or do we take more than we give? Do we fight the cycle or feed the cycle? Do we have poverty - or poverty-brain? Are we financially poor or simply poor in spirit? Are we poor in our bank accounts or poor in hearts and minds. Poverty mindset is any place where we are lacking. Do we have compassion poverty? Selflessness poverty? We can have lots of kinds of poverty mindsets. It doesn’t just affect us, but everyone around us. We are poor, and it shows. We see it and feel it. It’s becoming a cultural norm to put up the walls and be defensive.
I wonder if we fight or feed the cycle of poverty.
I wonder this because the hate that we give produces more and more hate, and if that’s the harvest that’s planted, we can’t blame the spoiled crops that come out. We can say all day long that we love, but as we all know, love is an action verb. It’s not a word at all. It’s meant to be shown, and you can easily see if you’re loved or not. It’s easy to tell.
This idea of whether you give more than you take or take more than you give is meant to be thought-provoking for social change. Do we honestly want to be the kind of people that expects everything to be handed to them, or do we want to be proud that we rolled up our sleeves and did the hard work because what we learned and gained from it was so much more rewarding than keeping our hands out all the time.
Let us consider these examples:
Instead of rolling down our windows and throwing trash out, let’s be the kind of people who go around and clean up trash.
Instead of us being the kind of people who are asking to borrow money all the time, let’s be the kind of people who work - and work hard. Stop asking and start doing. Don’t put people in an awkward position to say “no” and be the villain in your life. Rather, bless someone yourself.
Do you try to take away someone’s voice, or do you try to help give them their voice? Does silencing someone empower you or give you inner peace? I doubt it.
A few nights ago, at a ball game, my mom and I were walking to the vehicle, and three teenagers approached us to offer to carry our chairs for us. While this act of kindness truly is a rare thing these days, it was the glimmer of hope needed to remind me that there is hope for humanity.
It also reminded me to ask the question…what circles are we in? Are we in the circles where we’re around a bunch of takers, or are we around a bunch of givers? The circle matters because it can also alter our perspective.
Hopefully, we are inspired to leave the world better than we found - to be the kind of people that will give more than we take so that we’ll leave a positive legacy for the generations to come.
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