Be Generous
Have you ever watched a talk, performance, or concert that felt like a gift? Like the performer is giving us something precious? Wouldn’t it be amazing if we all could harness that generosity when speaking?
Last summer, while spending the afternoon with a dear friend, writer and musician, Jake Slichter, my son asked him who his favorite musicians were. The first name Jake uttered without hesitation was Stevie Wonder. Luke asked him, “Why?” And Jake answered, “Because he is generous.”
The truth is that Stevie Wonder is always in my top three favorite musicians ever, along with Bonnie Raitt and Everything But the Girl, but I couldn’t contain myself and butted-in, “What about The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Al Green? Aretha Franklin, Steely Dan, Ella Fitzgerald, Beck, PRINCE!”
Jake agreed that these are all wonderful artists. But to him, the thing that makes Stevie Wonder so phenomenal is his generosity.
Before writing this post, I reached out to Jake to dig a little deeper into his idea of generosity.
In his answer, this message rings out: generosity means love with no expectation.
Jake says it best (bold emphasis is mine):
“By generous, I mean I feel Stevie Wonder is consciously aware of giving me something, his music, which is filled with love, and yet never asking for anything in return (for example, my sympathy, or my agreement). His music—the songs, the musicianship, and his voice—feels steeped in abundance. Even his angry songs—“Living for the City,” “You Haven’t Done Nothing,” etc—feel steeped in abundant love, and that helps them hit all the harder. I feel he holds nothing back.
I think if I could pinpoint an example of his generosity, I would point first to his songwriting. His tunes are filled with wonderful surprises that convey to me the sense of a heart so overflowing with love it must always find new containers. For example, listen to “Creepin’.” The middle-eight—“When I’m asleep at night, baby . . .”—gives me this sense of looking for a new set of chords to hold the love that is overflowing from the singer.
As far as being a generous communicator (or performer), I think it means showing up with gratitude at the chance to offer something, and conveying no sense of an expectation or caveat. A singer who performs a song about loneliness with the hope that the audience will somehow take care of the singer is not being generous. A singer who sings that same song with the idea that it will open some important space within the hearts of the listener is.”
This week I invite all of us to be generous by working from a place of love without expectation. See how we feel and how this conscious practice moves, changes, shifts, our relationships.
*click on the links to learn about the artists and hear their songs…each Jake link is different.