Reflections (Peter)

Man… This class has been a ride. This has been some of the most careful spending that I’ve ever seen a group of people do. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done. Usually holding onto money is the hard part. Dumping it is the easy part. And the fun part. And you get a lot of cool stuff you don’t need after you’re done. This money isn’t easy or fun to spend. Also, I’m not going to get a lot of cool stuff I don’t need after. If it had been, though, I think we would have been doing a disservice to the Learning by Giving foundation. The only reason this experience has been so unique is because we’ve had to work hard, and continue to have to work hard, to figure out how best to give this money away, and at the end of it, we’re going to get something that everybody needs more of: experience and knowledge. Parts of it very discouraging, parts of it more encouraging. The most discouraging thing I think I’ve seen is that after 3 months of being in this class, this class has made me come to realize that the world’s problems are so much worse than I imagined them to be. The world’s problems are horrible. You can’t solve all of them. Even if you have a lot, there will always be more problems. With $5,000, a class of 17 people, and a small arsenal of literature on how to give, we’re not going to tackle 99% of the problems facing Porter County, IN, let alone all the problems in the world. The problems we want to tackle are too big and complicated for that. We probably won’t even agree unanimously on who should get the money. The encouraging part is that despite how unrelenting the world’s problems are, this class has managed to convince me that solving $5,000 worth of problems is definitely worth it. $5,000 can help a solid amount of people who need help. The other encouraging thing is that we probably won’t be able to unanimously agree on who should get the money, because there are so many people who are going to work hard to make sure the money is well spent that it’s almost impossible to determine who deserves it the most. In its own way, that’s a really satisfying thing to know about the world. There are enough people using their considerable talents to help others that you’re never even going to have an easy time figuring out who you should give your money to. That fact makes world seem a lot friendlier.