Asking for Help for a Friend

Ben has been friend for several years.  I met him before his brain injury when he and his partner were running a fast growing Utah startup called Hallo

He was always on a road bike when I would hear from him, somewhere in the Wasatch Mountains riding up hills with out electricity! Who does that :). We have had many nights at my house where I get to know Ben better and admire his courage to talk about the real struggle of mental health and his injury.

Yesterday he asked if I could help spread the world about his GoFundMe to raise money for medical needs.  Until writing this, I didn’t know how I felt about these type of giving campaigns.  I don’t normally get involved with many because I see a lot of requests from people  with whom I have no relationship.  

So, I did some inventory on my past behavior and thinking around giving when Ben text me asking for help today. I told him I can do better than share it on social, I will share it to my friends in an email, and talk a bit about giving. 

I’m going to repent right now of all the times I have passed on donating.  It isn’t a so frequent that I am asked to donate, so why not just be excited to help out vs feeling a burden that I often feel? Am I a stingy asshole who really can’t let go of a few bucks? Is there really anything else better for money to be used for than helping a human improve their life? I have to retrain my brian on this topic.

I think I should always do some amount of money to almost anything presented to me. Sometimes I miss donating because I get to busy and can’t figure out the donation portal, but now it is so easy with Apple Pay and such.  In my situation there is no excuse to not just default donate to everyone who has the courage to ask for help.  

Even if you don’t donate, read about Ben and realize that asking for help is not easy for humans just as it’s not easy for me to donate without a little hesitation.  Maybe the best policy is to set up ahead of time in your head how much you will give so it is just a simple operation. This is my plan going forward.  If I know the person or it’s someone in my community, I just want to have set amount I can help with always.

If you donate anything towards this campaign, can you let me know by replying to this email so I can match it.

Money is for these moments.

Thanks friends,

SP