Being Generous

Being Generous
Apr 4, '06 3:13 AMfor everyone
What does it mean to be generous? There is this lady in my office who works as a cleaner. She earns I think around RM 600 per month. She is a widow and has a son who was sent to prison and a daughter who is married and has a family of her own. It is obvious that she is not wealthy and cannot afford a lavish lifestyle.
Since the day she worked at our office, she has never gone out for lunch because she cannot afford it. She would bring some biscuits or make some fried noodles or capati or tosai to eat for lunch. I on the other hand had always gone out for lunch because I did not bring my own food. Sometimes, I would ask her if she wanted anything and as usual her answer would be "no thank you"
A few days ago, she came to the office with a tiffin set carrier filled with nasi lemak enough for 5 people to eat. The ingredients in the nasi lemak was pretty grand. There was ikan bilis sambal, petai sambal cooked with minced meat, fried kangkong, fresh timun.......she said she wanted to give us all a treat and boy did we enjoy our meal.
I thought it was very generous of her to do so because despite the little that she had, she still wanted to share with us all. I felt kindda ashamed of myself because I felt that I was not as generous as she was.
We are sometimes so fortunate that we tend to take our own comfort for granted. We use the ASAYO premises very often but never really cared for the premises as much as Kamala does. She brings table clothes on her own initiative to decorate the place and once she even bought paint to paint some parts of the wall of which she felt it was dirty. When she makes a cup of coffee for herself, she would ask every one else in the office if they wanted 1. She might not be a priest or a nun or a CEO or a manager or even a president of a css but I think she leads the best example of what it takes to be a generous and a kind person.