Generosity – An Antidote to Materialism?

“The giver gets more than the recipient. The recipient acquires something material and limited. The one who gives, however, acquires a good and pure heart.” Rabbi Yosef Yozel Hurwitz, the Alter of Novardok (1849–1919)

How much is enough? Like most middle-class Americans, Irv and I tend to accumulate and keep lots of stuff, making impulse buys when we hear of a new product that sounds interesting. (The air fryer, instant pot, and immersion blender come to mind.)  After 47 years in the same house, we are drowning in material goods.

Alan Watts, in his book, “The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are” questions American materialism, postulating that we are always seeking more rather than truly deriving pleasure from what we have. We mistake quantity for quality, accumulation for enjoyment.

“I live close to a harbor packed with sailing boats and luxurious cruisers which are seldom used, because seamanship is a difficult though rewarding art which their owners have no time to practice. They bought the boats either as status symbols or as toys…” he writes.

The book was published in 1966, 60 years ago. Imagine what Watts would think today when we can order anything from a coffin to a coffee pot from Amazon and have it delivered within days, or sometimes even hours!

The belongings that Irv and I have stockpiled came to plague us this spring when we got new carpet and had to relocate lots of “stuff,” much of it unused and forgotten for decades. Boxes of clothing, books and household goods went to the local thrift store, and I left a stack of black bags at the curb for trash collection.

Among the items we found buried in the closet were three of Irv’s old prosthetic legs, which he had replaced with a state-of-the-art, cellphone-controlled version. Yes, a prosthetic leg is a necessity not a luxury item. And yet we wondered why we had three forgotten devices taking up storage space when they could be helping others.

Serendipitously, the charity I volunteer for in Africa, Sasa Harambee (see my blog of Jan.15, 2026), just received a shipment of disability devices from a partner organization, Crutches4Africa. So, I learned about the charity, founded by David and Candice Talbot of Denver in 2006. David, a polio survivor who now uses a mobility scooter due to post-polio syndrome, started the charity after he met an African woman using a tree branch as a crutch.

Crutches4Africa collects devices from a dozen states and has delivered more than 200,000 mobility devices at no cost to people with disabilities in 17 countries in Africa and 11 other destinations.

Sasa Harambee just received 25 pairs of crutches, 25 walkers, four wheelchairs and a number of prosthetic devices. CEO Carol Carper personally brought a wheelchair to an impoverished Kenyan woman who is a double amputee. Carol took joy in watching the woman’s face light up as her life immediately changed.

Now Irv and I have a place to donate the prostheses that have been discarded in a closet for several years. And it made me wonder about other unused possessions in my home that could change someone’s life. What did we buy that we “couldn’t live without” that no longer serves a need or creates enjoyment in our lives? It’s time to look through the closets and shelves again with an eye toward generosity, a fitting antidote to our propensity to accumulate “stuff” we think we want, only to learn it’s not serving a higher purpose.